Around this time of year, people usually begin to lament how fast the year went by (it seems to go by faster and faster each year, like a global calendar conspiracy). But time doesn’t really fly by the way we think it does. We just forget everything we did and everyone we met.
Take Carla, for example. I met up with my native Berliner friend today and between walking through shopping streets and squatter apartments, eating falafel and drinking German beer, we reminisced about how we met: earlier this very year while backpacking in Seoul. She was on her way home after six months of farm and surf in New Zealand, and I was enjoying a week away from Taiwan during Chinese New Year. That was in February, but it felt like it could have been last year or the year before.
Since then Carla has started university — she might be the youngest friend I have these days — and I have left Taiwan, returned home to L.A., and embarked on my Eurotrip.
I’ve seen so many things and been so many places since February, I can hardly comprehend the idea that I was in Seoul just earlier this very year. Carla felt the same way. And yet, the calendar doesn’t lie. Time doesn’t fly if you give what you’ve done its proper due.
Yes, it has been quite a long, fruitful, eventful, good year.
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