Short Time on the Long Road

Every Wednesday a girl comes into the bank to cash her check. As she
comes up to my window I realize that she's familiar to me but I can
never place her. When she hands me her check and driver's license I see
the name and I remember. Her name is Morgan something and every
Wednesday as I validate her check through the printer and count out her
money I think to myself, "another week, I could swear she was here
yesterday". This is how time passes, without conscious awareness.
Before you know it's been another week, a month, ten years, a
lifetime?.


Time passes by us without us being aware. Most people put a
good number of years behind them before realizing this. Some people
wake up and realize that they've worked and saved for sixty years but
haven't really lived since they went higher than they ever dreamed on
the swings when they were eight. Other people wake up at thirty-five
and notice that they have the job they wanted, the car they wanted and
maybe even the spouse they wanted, but also they have that deep-seeded
notion of having accomplished nothing. Then there are others that wake
up at twenty and realize that life is quick and youth quicker, and that
their time is running out. These are the people that have a
chance.


At twenty, when your skin is still soft and your eyes retain
some fleeting pangs of innocence, there is hope. At twenty a person is
old enough to see life as it is, a mystifying ride on the winding road
of time. A road which covers a great distance in an all too fleeting a
moment. At twenty, one can see this knowledge clearly and has the
ability, and probably the will, to make something of it. A twenty-year
old most likely doesn't have the responsibilities to hold them back
from making the most of life. They are old enough to see things clearly
and young enough to take action and make every youthful moment count.
The trouble lies not in what people do after they realize, but in
realizing the quickness of life in the first place.


Sixty-year olds and thirty-five year olds have much more life
expereience than a twenty year old and have wasted far more time. It
makes sence for those closer to the end of the winding road of time to
notice the path they have taken. Twenty-year olds, in stark comparison,
are nearer the beginning of the journey and have not much path to look
back apon with forlorn lust for missed chances and days gone by.
Twenty-year olds have the whole road ahead of them and no need to look
back, while older people have decreasing path ahead and a building need
to look back.


What then makes a carefree youth wake up one morning with the
realization that they must make eachday count as they all go by so
fast? I have no idea. All I know is that it happens sometimes. And when
it happens a realization comes to the twenty-year old, a realization
that comes bound with a burnden of responsibility. Knowing that life
will pass you by, and has already began to do so without your concent
or awareness, comes with the burden of stopping it and preventing it
from happening again. But the sands of time move quick, and as we know,
it is very hard to notice each one as it passes silently through the
hour glasses of our lives. The only thing worse than waking up at sixty
and realizing that all the sand has slipped thourgh your hourglass is
waking up at sixty knowing that you let it happen. There can't be any
greater loss than that of knowing life passed you by with your
awareness of it and because of your failuire to make something of it.
This is the risk a twenty-year old runs when they realize so early in
life that the path is long and time short.


Unfortunatly, this is not a risk that anyone elects to take.
It is handed down to us, bestowed upon us, and cast into our hearts
with no warning. The only choice a twenty- year old has in the matter
is what to do with a lifetime.