Changing Focus

Wow!  It’s already November.  For a while, I was saying I didn’t know where the summer went.  Now I’m saying I don’t know where the fall went.  As I write this, it’s a very nice day and it still feels like fall, but we know that once we get to November winter is not far behind.  In fact, some years, by the time we get to November winter is already here.

I heard for years that as we get older, time seems to go by faster.  I know now that this is true.  I heard an explanation for it once that kind of made sense.  It said that, when you’re five years old, one year represents twenty percent of your life.  Because of that, one year seems like a long time.  But when you’re fifty years old, one year represents two percent of your life.  So, one year does not seem like very much at all.

But I think there’s another reason life is going by so fast for me.  I have a lot of stuff to do, and I enjoy almost all of it.  When your life is full, when there’s nowhere else you’d rather be and nothing you’d rather do and no one you’d rather do it with, the days seem to go by in no time at all.  So do the weeks and the months.  And that’s a pretty awesome thing.

But of course, sometimes we reach a time when our lives are not so full any more.  Sometimes that’s by choice.  Sometimes we decide that we want to slow our lives down and take time to do things or go places or enjoy certain things.  Sometimes, though, it’s not by choice.  Sometimes, there are lots of things we’d love to do, but we just cannot do them any more.

You may be dealing with that now.  It’s not easy.  I wish I had a nice, simple solution to it, but I don’t.  I can’t even really say I know how it feels, because I haven’t had it happen yet.  I know it’s got to be hard, and I can sympathize, but I cannot feel what you’re feeling.  The most I can do is make a suggestion, which you’re obviously free to ignore.

My suggestion is that you try to change your focus.  I know it’s hard—I don’t mean to act like this is easy.  But try.  Try to stop focusing on the things you wish you could do, but can’t.  Instead, focus on the things you can do.  Try to focus on the positive, rather than the negative.

Again, I don’t mean to act like this is going to be easy.  The sadness, grief even, over the fact that you can no longer do things you used to do is very real.  You’re not going to be able to just flip a switch and stop feeling it.  You’re still going to feel it, but you can, maybe, stop thinking about it so much.  Instead, you can start thinking about something you can do:  either something you can do to help someone else, or just something you can do to increase your enjoyment of your own life.

It may be hard, but I know you didn’t get this far in life by giving up.  Keep trying.  If you work at it, you can do it.  You can change your focus from what you can’t do to what you can do.  And you can make the most of every day, no matter how fast it goes by.