Time Moves Slowly but Passes Quickly

The title you just read is a sentence written by Alice Walker in The Color Purple. I just got sentimental with this sentence, with slightly different meaning and interpretation of course.

The last 30 days in my life were pretty hard. I hit rock bottom again. And just like old folks said: life feels very slow when we’re at rock bottom.

I won’t go with details but that’s how I feel. Ever since last month when this bad situation happened to me, my universe moves very slowly. An hour feels like one day, a day feels like one week, and even a week feels like one month.

A bit identical situation happened to me in 2018 and 2020, when I experienced almost the same problem in my life. But strangely, just like what Alice Walker said, this time is different.

Even though my mourning process feels very slow and probably will take a long time to finish, everything around me seems still moving fast. It’s very contrast with the 2018 and 2020 situation—when I felt that the world around me keep waiting for me to finish my mourning process.

This time, the feeling of moving slowly when everything around me moving fast is even harder than everything I’ve experienced.

As a human, I have a big curiosity. When I face problems that I don’t understand, I always find out the whys before trying to get the answer. This situation is no exception. And that’s why I wrote this post. Not to tell anyone, but to remind me in the future that I understand—at least theoretically—the mystery of this strange condition.

Yes, the times still move slowly anytime we are sad. And it will never change, because as stoicism and biology theories said: the human brain and body are created to digest sadness better than happiness.

But I think I know why everything around me is not and won’t ever move slowly again. It’s because I’m an adult.

The idea of how different children or teenagers vs adults embrace the time is not a secret anymore. Many researchers already explained that time passes by faster as humans get older. And I’m sure this is the reason why I bump into this situation. A situation where everything around me keeps moving fast even though I’m in a sad condition and my universe moving slower.

But this understanding of whys, seems like, not helping me to solve my problem yet. It even makes me more confused about my future.

I mean, everyone has their point of view or story right?

If we consider this constellation of POVs as a multiverse, there must be a consequence when my universe doesn’t move in line with another human universe.

And I’m sure there are only two possibilities: either my universe collapsing or the multiverse collapsing. And I do not want any of that to happen.

The collapse of my universe will transform me into a miserable human being of course. And I do not enjoy being miserable. It sucks.

The other possibility, the collapse of the multiverse—especially universes related to my universe—is also something bad. Because it will destroy my beloved family, my friends, and a girl I love so much even though she hates me to the bone.

I concluded that at the end of the day, I need to move faster. I should run, repair my universe, and makes it in line again with the multiverse.

And to make that scenario happen, I think I just need to do one thing: chase my dream as hard as I can.