Ramadan Mubarak to my Muslim brethren. Ramadan is almost ending again. Today is the seventeenth day and we are going into the third phase of the fasting month. Time is moving so fast. The last Ramadan, which is one year ago, appears to have happened a few weeks ago.
Do you realise that two years have elapsed since the coronavirus struck? What was supposed to be the New Year 2022 is already in the second trimester. The much-talked about 2022 elections, which looked far off, is just around the corner.
In a few weeks, we shall be voting and all the anxiety about who will get elected will be over. It looks like life has been put on a conveyor belt and someone has decided to increase the speed.
Or is it a sign of old age on my side? As a child, things looked different; just moving from one class to another in school took ages.
I remember in primary school we waited anxiously for the teacher to announce lunch break, but it looked as if it never was going to happen. Today, I sometimes look at my watch to see if the seconds and minutes are running faster than normal.
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Something else I have observed is that I tend to have more memories from my youthful period than the events of a few months back. The neurons in our brains operate differently as time goes. As one gets older the urgency to run against time sets in.
Once the clock touches 50 years, you realise that the time left on this Earth is beginning to shrink. All of a sudden a person begins to do things such as planning for retirement or putting up a business or a rural home. The race against time creates the perception that time is moving very fast.
The major cause of time moving too fast today is the use of social media. It is common to find people spending hours using their phones to chat with friends or to access the latest news. Just visit any restaurant or cafeteria in town and you realise that most of the patrons are glued to their phones.
Most people nowadays prefer to have a date with themselves. Even when a group goes together for dinner, it is common to find each person flipping through his phone unconcerned about those seated with him or her.
The speed at which time is going should be a reminder to those growing older to start slowing down. The desire to compensate for the lost time sometimes forces people to spend more time working very hard instead of focusing more on things they would love to do such as pursuing certain types of hobbies.
Like Shakespeare said, ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits’.
The realisation is dawning on me that time is becoming increasingly scarce. We do not have eternity and as one grows older this reality becomes more pronounced. But I still don’t understand why time is moving so fast at this age. Is this a commonly shared view or is it something peculiar to me? Anyway, let me spend more time in prayer during this month of Ramadan. You never know how much more time one has.
Mr Guleid is CEO, Frontier Counties Development Council.
