The Parts of Life Accelerated

The coffee was finished while still hot. The steam rising from the cup still hung in the air, but the person at the table had long since risen. He was not actually late for where he was going. There was no real rush either. Yet everything had felt a little too fast. The taste of the coffee was no longer clearly remembered. The rain outside the window had gone unnoticed. The faces of people passing by the table had not been recognized. The coffee had been drunk, but it had not truly been experienced. Of course, this state was not dwelled upon for the rest of the day. Because in life there are hundreds of small moments like this. They are lived, completed, and pass away. And most of the time time passes through people without them noticing until much later.

Perhaps a significant part of life proceeds this way: trying to reach the next moment. Waiting to grow up as a child, then longing for childhood after growing up. Thinking of summer vacation while at school, then waiting for autumn once summer arrives. Living Monday for Friday, autumn for summer, this year for next year. It is as if a person is constantly looking at a door ahead of them, one that has not yet opened, one that has not yet arrived. And sometimes, while waiting for that door to open, they miss the details of the room they are already in.

The strange thing is that a person’s impatience is not only directed at time. It is also directed at emotions. A sadness is felt and one wishes it would pass immediately. An uncertainty arises and one longs for a swift resolution. A grief begins, yet the person wonders when they will return to normal. Even happiness sometimes cannot remain within itself. Even when a beautiful moment is experienced, it is not enough to simply live it; a photograph is taken, its sharing is contemplated, and it is transformed into a memory to be recalled later. Sometimes instead of staying within what they are experiencing, a person places it already in the distant past.

I enjoy watching people waiting at a train station, especially before the train has arrived. In that brief interval, everyone is focused elsewhere: on the city they are going to, the meeting they will have, the time they will reach. No one wants to be at the station. The station is merely a place to pass through. Yet much of life resembles stations: waiting areas passed through while constantly striving to reach somewhere else. But most of the time, people fail to see where they are because they are preoccupied with where they will arrive.

Perhaps that is why waiting is gradually losing its value. Once a part of time itself, waiting now seems pushed outside of time. Everything is accelerating. Messages arrive faster. Journeys take less time. Images change more quickly. But it is difficult to say that everything that speeds up also deepens. Some things, conversely, remain superficial. Pages of a book are turned but its contents are not fully entered. A conversation continues but attention wanders elsewhere. A meal is eaten but its flavor is not remembered. A person completes things but never truly lives them.

I do not actually think the seasons pass more quickly. Perhaps we simply notice them less. One day the trees bloom. Then we look again and the leaves have fallen. Summer has come and gone. Autumn has suddenly entered through the window one morning. Children have grown. Parents’ hair has grown a little grayer. The people in photographs that have sat on the same shelf for years have changed. Often, people do not notice these changes as they live through them, because their eyes are always fixed on a point ahead.

Perhaps that is why some things feel urgent. A conversation with a friend. An evening walk. Pausing in the middle of a book to think. A quiet afternoon. Looking out the window. These are not grand events. They are not marked on calendars. People do not make elaborate plans to reach them. Yet perhaps the greater part of what we call life is made up precisely of these moments. The problem is that while searching for great moments, people pass right through the small ones.

Do we recognize life’s important moments as we live them, or only after they have passed? I think there is no definitive answer to this question. Because sometimes, years later when we look back, the things we miss are the very days that seemed unimportant at the time. A hastily eaten dinner. A street walked every day. A door that will never open again. A routine conversation with a friend. These moments do not seem destined to become history as they are lived. Yet memory preserves them. Because perhaps the things that truly compose a person’s life are as much small repetitions as they are major ruptures.

Why does a person always strive to reach the next moment? Perhaps because of hope. Perhaps because of curiosity. Perhaps because the future seems brighter than the present. But whatever the reason, there is a subtle impatience in the relationship between a person and life: a constant something just ahead, a next stop always requiring approach.

Yet sometimes, when we turn around, what we miss most are not the goals we have reached, but the paths we passed without noticing on the way to them. The days in between. The moments of waiting. The conversations left unfinished. The times we thought too ordinary ever to return to.

And perhaps the most valuable parts of life are not truly found in the places we arrive at, but in the places we pass through without noticing while rushing.