Heading Up

First of all, while I did sort of vow to not discuss sports here (as I may have mentioned before), yesterday requires some amount of discussion. Just briefly. Because I know I'm going to be constantly railed upon for the next few weeks. So, just quickly now, yes, I am annoyed by the losses by Houston and Green Bay yesterday. What kind of fan would I be to not be annoyed? Second, not to detract from the Giants, Green Bay really self-destructed rather than got beaten. It was that kind of game. And yes, I think they'll be able to now have a nice long think about how nineteen game winning streaks are no reason to slow down. At all.

Right. Now that's out of the way.

Growing up. That annoying thing we all must do eventually. That, and perception of time. When I was little I always thought of the future as some big, far, distant place. A place I didn't understand well but was sure I would when I got there. As I moved into preteen-teen years it started to become more real and more worthy of thought, but was still a long way off. Suddenly I'm in the future. Well, part of it. University was always classed as “out there” for future.

During my first year at Veritas Press I made some very close friends with whom I still communicate frequently. When I first met them university was the kind of thing we all had to think about but was still far away enough that we could sleep at night. As the years progressed and it drew ever closer I, for one, started to wonder what it would be like in university, having the friends that I had; remember, being homeschooled I didn't really “grow up” with any schoolmates or anything. I had no idea what to expect as this was as close as I was going to get to “moving away” from the town and school where I grew up (as is often the subject of advise columns for pre-teens).

The funny thing about growing up, however, is that everyone else seems to progress with you. My younger brother has always been two years younger and always will be, but it's so easy to forget that just two years ago I was exactly where he was. Going back to the people I knew/know from Veritas Press; when I “met” them they were a certain age and for some reason having a mental image of them at any other age is remarkably difficult. And then there's my littlest brother. He's another interesting piece because I have watched him grow up. I can remember him as a baby because I was old enough to remember. While this is probably horribly naïve, I find it to be similar to a parent watching their child grow. Everything he does I've done years before. And it will likely be the same through much of our lives.

So why is this? Why is the phenomenon of growing up so odd? Everyone does it, there are countless books written about it, shouldn't we know what we're doing now and what to expect? See, that's the whole thing. As we grow, and observe those around us growing as well, our own perspective is changing so we often cannot really compare things as they were to as they are yet, this is the key, we do it anyways. This is why watching my littlest brother grow is different; I'm sufficiently far enough ahead of him that he does not gain my position in life until many years later.

Anyways, I've run out of time. But this topic was rather pressing on me as I was pondering how very weird it is that the present becomes the past, the distant past becomes yesterday and the future becomes today. All far too quickly.