A FUTURE lawyer at a regional offi ce in Legaspi City, finishing law this March, 2008, told me once she did not notice the passing years in school. It seems, she said, her first day in the law school happened only yesterday. Oh, how time flies, she mused.
Indeed, time does fly for busy people. If you are deep in your work, you will not notice the ticking of the clock. You are oblivious of your surrounding.
It is what people should do, those bored in life. Keep themselves occupied with work. As Free Press Editor Teodoro Locsin, Jr. once said, work abolishes thought, and may I add, any work refreshes the mind.
When I was at the Press Office in Bicol College waiting for my next subject to start which is sometimes more than an hour away, I busy myself reading books than staring at passing people.
There were times, how- ever before, as newly transferred from the Commissionon Human Rights when I felt terribly bored and lonely. What I did was record my thoughts and visit them once in a while.
You know, what I had jotted down in my moments of, shall we say, gloom, could be a literary masterpiece. When a person is bored, in great pain, lonely, the best in him comes out.
My masterpiece is for my eyes only.
Back to the rapidly passing years, when my youngest son, Herbert, came home from the Middle East weeks ago with his pregnant wife Che, it dawned on me that my little boy was a grown-up man, raising his own family.
But when I looked at the photo when he was three years old, I could not believe the rapid passing of years. To me, the photo seemed taken only last week. He was in colored T-shirt, short pants, holding on to a post at our front yard in San Roque, Legaspi City.
The same is true with my eldest son, Edgar. He was about three years old in the Northern Catanduanes town of Caramoran when I started leaving home for a job in Legaspi City. Everytime I leave, he would howl, begging me not to go.
His first-born, Patrick, is six years old now, four years ahead of his youngest, Rinzo who stays with his mother in another part of Our Lady’s Village in Legaspi City.
Looking at Edgar’s family photo Edgar, his wife Lorena, Patrick and Rinzo – I could not believe the years have passed in rapid succession unnoticed.
I am now past 60, growing old slowly with my teacher-wife from Catanduanes who is one year my junior. It appears that in Legaspi City where I have taken roots the seasons come and go, marching without rest and we do not notice them.
Time flies, indeed. Even in the epic movie about the Trojan War written by the Greek Homer in Iliad, a scene showed the hero Odysseus at a sorcerer’s palace, enjoying her company. What appeared to him as five days was five years outside the palace.
Odysseus, king of Ithaca, was the smartest of the Greek heroes. It was he who suggested the construction of a giant wooden horse which enabled the Greeks to enter the fortified Troy City.
Without the wooden horse brought inside the walled city by the Trojans themselves, Troy would not have been conquered.
Have you heard about the Dutch legend whose main character went hunting one day with his dog and returned home after 20 years? The story had enthralled as boys no end when we were in high school in Caramoan, Camarines Sur.
The man, Rip Van Winkle, met strange men at the foot of the mountain near his home carrying heavy loads of wine. He helped carry the cargo up the mountain and was offered a drink. He satisfied himself with the wine, his eyelids growing heavy after every gulpful.
When he woke up, his dog was gone, his hunting gun rusty and his clothes in tatters. Even his nagging wife was dead.
He slept for 20 years, the legend says, but to him, it was only one whole afternoon.
Time flies, indeed.
