It's That Time Again
It’s hard for me to believe it’s nearly 2011. Does anyone else feel like 2010 just flew by? I suppose if you are in the throes of treatment, the time can’t pass fast enough. I certainly remember wishing my months of chemo and radiation would go into a time warp so I could not only get on with my life, but see if the treatments had worked and I was once again healthy.
There are moments when I feel that I worked so hard just to live; it’s not fair for the time I’ve been given to flash past me in what seems like a blur. I, like most breast cancer survivors, have a deep and profound respect for the sheer luxury of having all of these additional years, months, weeks, hours, and minutes. I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m whining when I complain about feeling they are passing much too rapidly.
And it isn’t just my time that seems to be darting towards the unknown at an ever quickening pace, it’s everything affected by times passage as well. When I was diagnosed again in 2005 one of the things that helped me to want to hang on was the knowledge that my son and his wife were expecting their first child. I was over the moon. I distinctly recall marking the days of my treatment off on the calendar, not because I was keeping track of what ailed me as much as I was looking forward to Jencie’s arrival.
She was born right after I completed my radiation treatments, so her birth provided me with my first test of strength and courage post-treatment. I knew I wasn’t up to driving the 12 hours it would take to see her, and the idea of being confined on a plane 30,000 feet (why do they tell you that?) above ground was more than I could bear. I will forever remember my train trip to see her with pride and nostalgia. I was still so raw both physically and emotionally. My hair was just beginning to grow in again. This meant normal wasn’t far away, but I was still exhausted from both the regime I’d been forced to endure and the sheer magnitude of facing my mortality a second time. I think I was also worn out because my second go ‘round reinforced I still had so much to learn about life, and ultimately, death.
Now, nearly five years later, I marvel that time has passed so quickly in terms of her development – and so slowly in terms of my ability to distance myself from illness. How can I feel like it was just yesterday when I saw her for the first time – and eons since I underwent treatment? Of course, I want my memories of what I endured to fade because living in that place isn’t pleasant. But I don’t want to forget what I learned. And it seems each year further out from diagnosis I get, the less I hold onto some of the valuable lessons fearing for my life taught me.
Rather than being all morose and melancholy about something over which I have no control, I decided to look for ways to make it seem like time is going more slowly when I’m enjoying myself. I figure all of these self-help gurus are always providing us with endless lists of how we can improve this and that, so just a little bit of research might help me discover, if not how to turn back the hands of time, at least slow things down a bit.
One of the first places I looked had a quote from Einstein. Since it doesn’t take an Einstein to make me feel like I’m in the company of mental giants, I figured actually using one of his quotes would certainly make me look a bit smarter, even if the clock is still ticking just as rapidly.
I was amazed to discover that Einstein could actually explain just a tidbit of his theory of relativity in a way I could grasp. Here is a quip that didn’t leave me scratching my head: "When you sit on a hot stove a minute seems like an hour. When a pretty girl sits on your lap an hour seems like a minute." By jove, I think I got it!
Then I read the following: Scientifically, to make time go faster you must move as slowly as possible, but because the earth makes us move fast we should head towards its center where the earth moves slower. This is because at any speed that you travel, the speed of light is always the same. What changes is the time, so going very fast makes time appear to be going slowly and going very slow makes time appear to be going faster.
Okay, let me see if I got this right. The reason I feel like time is going fast is because I’m going slow (don’t even ask me to try to figure out the part about heading towards the center of the earth – because even I know I don’t have that kind of time)!
If that theory holds any water, I guess it’s time for me to speed things up. (I get tired just thinking about it.) I did have a moment where I wondered if that’s why some women do all of their Christmas and holiday shopping in July. Are they on to something besides beating the crowds and finding bargains? If I’m right, those little stinkers aren’t just beating us to the punch, they’re slowing down the year. Heck, if you start thinking about the holidays in July, by the time they actually get here it feels like that’s all you’ve thought about for ages.
This is one plan I can put into action right now! So, let me take this opportunity to wish all of you a very happy Valentine’s Day. If my theory is right, it’s going to seem like a long time coming.
