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The Catch About Time

Constanza Villela

We like to say that time is relative, that we have forever, when in reality forever is sometimes just an instant scattered across time. The concept of time is ruthless and waits for no one. When I was ten years old my tita, my grandma grabbed my hand and told me, “The carousel never stops spinning, you can't get off so just embrace growing up.” At the time I did not understand her point, but as I started to get older I realized she was right. Time never stops no matter how hard you want it to. 


The passage of time sometimes feels like sand slipping through your fingers; the more you try to hold on, the quicker it falls. Now I am sixteen, but I'm also fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, and all of the years that came before that. I still have my six-year-old laugh and my thirteen-year-old humor. I may be sixteen but inside I'm still stuck at ten. I cannot quite put my finger on the moment I truly grew up, the moment when we went from playing four square at lunch to worrying over a test. When did things start holding so much importance that we got lost in time, never truly appreciating where we were? Where does time go, the slow passing of days and the race car-like feeling of the years? 


People including me get fixated on the future, what we will do in the afternoon, tomorrow, or even next week forcing ourselves to live in the future rather than in the present, rather than truly getting to experience life. We tend to focus on what’s coming or on things we cannot seem to change, we call this the past. But when does something become the past? Where is the line between the ‘now’ and the ‘then’? There is not one answer to this, but rather the one you choose to fit your timeline. I have become scared of blinking, terrified I will miss it all. We as a society come to lose sight of time and look at memories as a temporary fix for a consistent gap in our lives. 


A reminder of the passage of time and a perfect example of the fleeting reality of life are birthdays. The days in which we celebrate the lives we get to live, with the people that make life worth living.


Birthdays, are a concept that superficially seems to be simple and light, when you think about it more thoroughly they can be so much more complex than we tend to give them credit for. This one day can mean so many different things for so many different people. Some dread their birthday, the reminder they are growing up, that they are getting older. And somehow some seem to live for their birthdays, using them as a reminder that they are alive and that they are lucky enough to have the opportunity to get older. I fall into the latter category, adoring my birthday with such passion that sometimes it seems to water other moments down. 


We always hear the phrase “There is a fine line between love and hate.” I always thought that sentence sounded delusional and full of negativity because how can polar opposites turn into one another? Further on in life, I have realized I am the contradiction of my own ideology about the phrase. While I live for my birthday and can never seem to get enough of it, loving it sometimes turns into hatred of the day, of the mockery of a reminder that I can't seem to get off the carousel. How do I stop growing up? How can I move on in life when I feel stuck in the past? 

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