Time has reached such a dizzying velocity that I cannot in any visceral sense imagine it getting any faster; and yet this is the same error I’ve made over and over. They say people are atrocious at internalizing non-linear responses — we can’t feel them in our guts because nature never required it of us — and so it proves. Just like compound interest never fails to surprise, the maddening increase in the increase of the velocity of time is like bracing to get punched in the face, then getting kicked in the nuts. Every year a shock, even when you try to account for the shock in your estimate.
The nice thing, I guess, is that intolerable things go away quickly. You get used to whatever it is, whatever tragedy, even when you think you won’t. The re-basing of our attitudes toward pleasure and pain is the glory and the tragedy of the human condition. And here we are, again: a cold day tomorrow, the future stretching ahead, promising whatever it’s promising.
Thanksgiving, dead a week and a half, blinked and I missed it.