There's a trick about the passing of time no one ever tells you about. It begins with the vision to recognise when something has come to an end - and then simply let it go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out. So even though it might feel like we are a hundred years old; waiting for the end, let us take this moment and remember the beginning. There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes? I know you are unable to imagine this. Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved. Nothing can shield you from this, for as we have come to learn together - time is never time at all.
