We're All Humans, Aren't We?

It’s funny how time goes by so quickly. I had planned to be long done
with my Jamaican updates and onto other things by now. But then again,
this is the same guy who’s been postponing getting a haircut for quite
some time now. Yes, I promise everyone who’s been begging me to get my
hair cut that I will accomplish that very feat this week in addition to
a majorly-needed oil change for my car.

Time. Aubrey
wrote a thoughtful entry on how much time we spend being stuck in time.
One thing that I’ve found very interesting about time is that as
objective as it is (an hour in America is the same as an hour in
Nigeria), it’s also hugely subjective. I remember being a kid and being
sent to a corner of the room to sit for twenty minutes for punishment.
It was agony, watching those
minutes slowly tick away. Or even being stuck in bed sick, trying to
sleep through the night. Dawn seems an eternity away.

But on the other hand, as we sit through an enthralling movie, three
hours can pass and not feel like it. A vacation week seems faster than
a work week. Time spent with a certain special someone makes the hours
go by effortlessly.

It’s amazing how those two perspectives can be shared by two different
people and yet time hasn’t changed its march. It hasn’t sped up or
slown down. A minute still takes a minute to elapse. It has to do so
much with our perspective at that certain moment in our life.

If anyone hasn’t done already, this is your homework. Go check out Amelie, or Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain (The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain),
as it’s known in France. (Yes, it’s a foreign film and has subtitles.
Get over yourselves and go see it already. Follow the link at the
bottom of this post to find out more about the movie. It’s the perfect
movie for the new spring weather!)

Amelie is this cute, wonderful
movie about discovering, among other things, little things in life that
people enjoy. It really is the small stuff that makes life enjoyable
and we should find those things and cherish them, no matter how small
and insignificant it may be. For example, Amelie loves the feeling of
putting her hands in a small bag of grain or skipping stones. As for
me, I love the smell of homemade bread; the taste of exploding grapes
in your mouth as you bite into them; the smell and feel of a brand new
book that hasn’t been broken in; or the way my face feels after a day
or two of not shaving. There’s more, but you get the idea. What are
your favorite little things?

Finding all these wonderful things and learning to enjoy them will help
anybody move time along. At this point in my life, time’s been going by
quickly because I have been enjoying the company of someone special and
I’m finding all these little things that I like about her, like the way
her hands make mine look big, but yet they’re still the perfect size
for me to wrap my hands around them or the way her face crinkles when
she’s trying her best to resist being tickled.

Life is too short to live it bitter, cynical, angry, or whatever
negative feelings might creep in and want to camp out. I don’t want my
time on Earth to feel like eternity. It’s spring, we have an extra hour
of daylight, and my bedroom window’s still cracked open at 3 a.m. Yup,
good times.

As for the rest of my Jamaica entries… maybe next time.