Time.

In some ways it feels like I have been in New Zealand forever.  Then I think about events passed, and it seems like I arrived last week.  It’s curious how the mind doesn’t give an accurate perception of time.  Time is only relevant when you look at your watch or at a calendar.  The concept is lost without a visual object that measures it, defines it or gives it a framework.  Without these time defining objects, time becomes meaningless.  What happened a year ago could have happened 5 years ago or it could have happened last week.  Once it is a memory, it is relegated to the past regardless how far gone that past it.  Time, as a concept, is irrelevant.

So what about the future?  For me, what’s planned for next week is just as imperceptible as what is planned for next year.  It is something yet to occur.  It’s only when I define the occurrence of the event with a measurement of time that I get a sense of it being near or far in to the future.  This gives me great comfort as I look around me now, not having yet left New Zealand but already craving to return.  This maybe won’t occur for a while yet, though by not letting a unit of time define this plan to return I get a sense that my return is just as imminent as my upcoming departure.  It’s all in the future and this eases my current sadness.  A little.