Adam Blatner

The angels have been conspiring to remind lil’ ol’ me that life is shorter than I thought, and I realized that others also are prioritizing—or needing to. There’s a density of eventfulness. There have been changes in how much I feel this way or that, so that such and such seems important! I’ve noticed that I don’t care with the same degree of intensity about some things. Their ranking of importance in my mind has been decreasing.

Concomitantly, I realized that my expectation that this should not happen in adulthood is slightly crazy. It was okay as a kid, but then things should have remained consistent. It was not so much crazy as just not noticed and revised. Of course values change, rise and fall regarding different things.

For example, somehow it seemed that my interests would only expand, now that I’m retired, and they did for a while, but now it’s capping out and the world just starts to become a bit too much. My wife is inviting me to cut down or back a little. No way, says I, but a some things are desired less than before, and I just noticed this decline. Certain experiences are felt a tiny bit more weakly or softly than before, while others are more focused or meaningful. Do you ever sense that "events" speed up in their density though you know they haven’t? It’s called "getting even older."