Graduation Rumination XV - Where Did the Days Go?

May 3, 2015.

Where did the days go?

They were swallowed up in laughter and tears, good jokes and long talks. They were sealed away with sunsets over leafless branches, lofty snow banks, and rolling tides. They were ticked off on calendars, planners, and syllabi. They were carried by strangers and strange encounters, old friends, and new friends. They were filled with coffee houses, and soccer games, and mission trips, and practicums. They were endured by digging out cars, parking in woodland, studying for tests and writing papers. They were savored over hot baked cookies, cold fruit smoothies, dunkin iced coffee, and three day old leftovers. They were laid down in worship, prayer, daily devotions. They were spent on long drives, birthday gift shopping, bringing home fresh flowers for the table. They were prolonged with early mornings and even later nights the hours in between tossed skywards.

Tonight everyone in my apartment happened to be in the living room at the same time. And I have come to cherish those moments when all five of us are gathered around the coffee table by chance. Tonight as we sat and talked we found ourselves turning over the topic of where the heck this semester went. I’ve said it since my sophomore year and I’ll stick by it, every semester goes by faster than the last. I’m less than two weeks away from having completed 8 of 8, and every single one has passed with increasing velocity. I don’t understand it. I can’t comprehend it. But tonight we sat and talked about just how fast this year has gone by and where exactly our time went. How can it feel like just a night or two ago I was sitting under Haitian stars, when in actuality it’s been 16 weeks – 112 days – 2,688 hours – 161,280 minutes – 9,676,800 seconds. How has it been that long since I returned to Gordon for my last semester? How has it been 16 weeks when it feels like 16 days at most? And where did those days even go? To snow? To work? To class? To long nights editing in the lab? To movie nights? To card games? To baking cookies? Where did the days go?

And as we talked about how quickly the days have gone, we couldn’t help but notice how distant fall semester feels. We tried to remember the things that took our hours then. Was it a sunflower field, a corn maze, a birthday dinner, Christmas celebrations and a whole lot of baking? Yes, we agreed. It was. But when we came to terms with the unexplainable distance between now and August we were left to reconcile the even more unexplainable speed in which the time has passed since January. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand it, the way life goes by so quickly you can hardly catch your breath. I don’t think things are going to slow down, at least that’s not the way the trend is looking. So I guess I’ll just keep going, trying to pause every now and again, trying to slow down just enough so it isn’t all a blur.

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