skaterWith a super-sonic bang my time horizons just expanded.  For a while there I figured I had about a 50/50 chance to make it to age 50 (three more years).  But now I’m suddenly thinking of making it to 100.  With good nutrition and plenty of exercise, why not?

It is an amazing experience to live with a radically foreshortened time horizon.  The present moment becomes all you have.  You rest in it; you hold on to it; you savour it completely.  You don’t worry about the future for the simple reason that the future might never come.  Instead each second is so rich, so full of flavor, color and texture.  There are accounts from Nazi concentration camps that describe this experience: the indescribably beauty a sun-set that might very well be your last.

I wish I always could live like that.  Every day.  Every moment.  Not to worry about the future.  To rest, happily, in one present after another.  This would be to truly live one’s life, instead of skating over, and missing, most of it.

But then my time horizon expanded and so did our plans.  Maybe we should go to the US in February after all?  Maybe we should buy that expensive German refrigerator?  Learning that Chinese character makes sense — I might make use of it later.

It’s a great relief to make plans.  To have the time.  Yet I miss that experience of the present.  I miss the indescribably beauty of one moment after another.  I’m once again starting to skate too quickly across my life.

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