My grandfather gave me a gift one afternoon, when I was still an adolescent.  His gift was largely responsible for my choosing the path of a therapist.

At the time, this grandfather, my mother’s father, was seventy-something, and his older brother had just died.

We were sitting outside together, and he suddenly looked at me intently, yet gently, and spoke to me, “It was just yesterday that we were kids together.”

He then fell silent, wearing an expression of pained wonder.

There was no hint of complaint in his voice.   I would have thought him entitled, but it was not like him.  Instead, I thought his expression  was one of amazement, as if he had awoken  as Rip Van Winkle, but had lost even more time.

Yet, he was not enchanted by an illusion of lost time.  He was speaking the truth about human consciousness.

Indeed, as he had never spoken to me like this, I listened carefully.

I thought, “Someday, if I make it to his age, it will seem like yesterday that I was the teenager that I am now.”

Time speeds up, I realized.  I promised myself not to forget this, and mostly I have not.

It is the most important thing I have ever learned, to live my life and make my choices as if time were short.

Eventually everyone who lives into middle age knows this, but time is no more precious in the late days than in the early days.

The earlier you know this, the more likely you are to inject your life fully into your time rather than “killing time.”

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