jeff wrote:
For me, at least, time's acceleration is mitigated by a diminishing fear of death. It was a paralyzing dread when I was a kid, and I wondered how old people could appear so relaxed. And I suppose that makes sense. The more time you see ahead of you, in potential, the more anxious you ought to be about losing it.
You would think, yet for me the fear of death wasn't based on loss of expected life span. I wasn't afraid of dying too young. I was concerned that death couldn't be avoided.
I would lay in my bed in the pitch blackness and think up the largest number of years I could imagine, and then I would multiply it by itself and remind myself that that was NOTHING next to the length of time I would be dead. Then I would start to moan.
The moment when the flaw in my reasoning became real knowledge in me was one of the best of my life.
And yeah, I couldn't understand how old people were so relaxed, either.
