As I reflect upon the events of my life, I am amazed by the way things that seemed to unfold slowly also seemed to pass quickly, a confusing contradiction.

Some examples might clarify my line of thought. As a child, I remember summer vacation from school seemed to stretch on forever until suddenly, it was September, school was starting again, and it seemed as if vacation had started only yesterday. Later in life, high school and college seemed to be endless, until graduation day, when it seemed like it had all passed by in a flash. Then there is the experience of raising children. The actual activity of raising children seems to move slowly, until the children are children no more and then it all seems to have passed too quickly. The ultimate example is life itself. Day to day, life rolls along, one day running into the next, until something happens to make you stop and look back and you realize how much time has passed, and how many things you had planned for “someday” that are still waiting for your attention.

I believe that people should follow their dreams, no matter how impractical or inconvenient the dream may be. Very few of us make the outright decision to give up on our dreams. Rather, the dream usually starves to death.

We make excuses to explain or justify our lack of action – “I’ll start when I grow up”, becomes, “when I get out of college”, which becomes “when I get a steady job”, which becomes “after I get married”, which becomes “when the kids start school”, which becomes “when the kids finish school”, which becomes “when I retire”, which becomes… “If I would have started earlier, but it’s too late now”.

I decided to explore this line of thought by doing a painting of a fleeting moment in time. As the sun is setting and if conditions are right, just before the sun slips out of sight below the horizon there will be a brief period of time when the eastern sky has already surrendered to the quickly approaching darkness, but the slanting rays of the setting sun still brightly illuminate the countryside. I find the darkening eastern sky, contrasted with the flash of warm golden light, to be beautiful visually and spiritually.

You have to watch for it, though, because like life itself, it happens quickly.

No matter what stage of life you find yourself in, if you have a dream, get started chasing it now. “It’s Getting Late”.

Image and Text © 2013 James Golaszewski