Feeling groovy

I thought that old age would mean a slowing down of time. But here I am, still taking on projects, running as fast as I can to keep pace with the days that are going by too fast.

It’s June. Half the year is gone. Where did time go?
Next month, I will be another year older. How did I get here so fast? 

The march of time seems to be faster as I grow older. I still remember how long it took for me to turn six so I could receive my First Holy Communion. And the traumatic growing up years between 13 and 18 seemed to never end.

College was a busy time with plays, parties, crushes, boyfriends, summers in Baguio, and yes, academics, too. Those four years crammed with fun, just sped by. And then it was time to be a grown-up.

I was 20 when I made my first independent decision about my life. While real life awaited me in Manila, I decided to work in a barrio in Surigao del Sur as a teacher in a parochial school. It was an entirely new world out there, filled with discovery of rural life and how most Filipinos live, and for myself, how difficult it was for a city-born and -bred person to adjust to the sameness of the days in a barrio where time stood still and nothing ever changed except the weather.

In my mid-20s, I thought it was time to be married and have a family. My two pregnancies were perhaps the longest nine-month periods in my life. But once my babies were born, they grew up too quickly.  One day they were in pre-school, and pretty soon they were entering high school. Time slowed down in my 30s to 40s. Marcos was president for 20 years, the last 14 as a dictator who placed the entire country under martial law.

  From 1972 to 1980 were the most tedious years when the public was bombarded with mind-numbing propaganda about how great a leader Marcos was and how wonderful it was to live under the monotony of the controlled news and biased views of the New Society.

Things began to perk up for me only when my mother was arrested in 1979 and I realized I had something to fight for.  The two and a half years between the murder of Ninoy Aquino at the tarmac in 1983 and the EDSA People Power Revolution in 1986 were so crammed with protest, the days just melded into an electrifying continuum.

The next decades after EDSA brought the march of time back to its normal pace. Our politics never really got back to normal as we lurched from one administration to the next, but we at least had elections and orderly transfers of power. However, the last 10 years have been going by so rapidly, I can no longer remember if something happened 10 or five or three years ago. Or was it just last year? When did the peace talks last collapse? When was I last in New York? When did I receive that award? When did my favorite aunt die? I can no longer tell.

I thought that old age would mean a slowing down of time, giving the elderly the opportunity to smell the flowers and reminisce about their lives, or even write a book. I used to imagine growing old sitting on a rocking chair and watching the sunset with a significant other.  But here I am, still taking on projects and meeting deadlines, running as fast as I can to keep pace with the days, weeks and months that are going by too fast.

Actually, I am not complaining. I am merely filled with the wonder of the discovery that old age doesn’t have to be the beginning of the end. In my 70s, which I used to think would be too old for comfort, I am still doing what I could do at 50.  I’ve never been athletic so all I can still boast about is taking long walks to please my Fitbit, being able to travel alone, and sleeping in my bedroom on the third floor of our townhouse.

Didn’t somebody say 70 is the new 50?

Still, I wish time would slow down.  There is still so much I would like to do.  As Simon and Garfunkel sang in The 59th Street Bridge song, “Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last.”

I’m still “lookin’ for fun and feelin’ groovy.”