Time's unstoppable flow

It has always been my intention to post a number of witty and insightful blogs on this site. However, since -- for the time being at least -- I have clearly failed, I am posting another piece from Horsley's Over The Wall, just to keep you going. (They get all the best stuff) 

I can't be the only one to have noticed that time has begun to speed up at an alarming rate. As if growing older weren't enough of a challenge without suddenly discovering that another whole year has flashed by in what – in one's childhood – would have been the space of a single summer's day.

It's a bit like those people who go over the edge of the Niagara Falls in a barrel – you know: the accelerating rush, the deafening roar, the helplessness as they are drawn toward the foaming brink.

Readers: Goodness – did they survive?

Personally, I prefer to think of myself as one who, rather than trusting to the mercy of time's cruel current, chooses to swim against it, like a magnificent salmon leaping through the tumbling rapids.

Readers: “I guess they didn't make it, eh?”

Who?

Readers: “The guys in the barrel.”

Forget the guys in the barrel; I'm sharing some of my best insights here.

For example, it has been shown that, when it comes to resisting time's inexorable course, one of the best strategies is to set about acquiring a new skill. It might be learning to speak a foreign language, playing a musical instrument or a mastering a juggling trick.

There is one crucial point to remember however and it is this: on no account must you be tempted to allow curiosity to develop into an actual proficiency. Quite apart from the fact that you will undoubtedly discover the whole business to be far more complicated than you first thought, the fact is you simply don't have the time to sit back and practice your new found skill.

Or, as all good hedge-fund managers will tell you:

“Never trade today's reality, for tomorrows potential”

Readers: “It's fine for you to talk about forgetting but once you've planted an image like that it takes some shaking off.”

I take it we're still on about the barrel here?

Readers: “The slow, strangely silent fall followed by the inevitable, sickening impact”

Oh, for goodness sake. Who's meant to be writing this piece?

OK, have it your own way: they all went over the edge and I'm not sure any of them survived.

Readers: Alas - it is just as we feared.

I'm beginning to regret ever bringing up the subject.