Yel Kaye – Travel Blog, Writing and Photography

“Times flies when you’re having fun.”

I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times, as I have. It’s common knowledge, right?

But hold on. Does time really fly when you’re having fun? I have always disagreed.

Ever since I was a little girl, I have found that time only flies when things are “okay.” You know, when life is chugging along normally, and nothing bad but nothing out of the ordinary is occurring – that’s when “time flies.”

Time slows down at either end of the spectrum. A week can feel like an eternity when either a) many exciting, wonderful and interesting things are happening or b) when things are bad. (Thanks, but I’ll choose the former.)

Last summer I was living in Ouagadougou for only a month. But that month felt like forever, because every day held new challenges, interesting things to learn, and great new friends. Great memories were formed every day, whether it was teaching the neighborhood kids how to play stella-ella-olla or going to a bizarre and wonderful Burkinabe wedding.

The first couple months of 2009 were very bad. Shit happened. That time also seemed to last forever.

But the rest of this 2008/2009 school year was, you know, pretty okay. I have good friends in Ottawa, I went to school every day, I went out for beers on the weekend. But nothing really extraordinary happened. There are pockets of time when I look back and I don’t really remembered what was happening. As such, all those months seemed to fly by.

Here’s the thing: everything we know, basically, consists of memories. If a ton of notable memories are packed into a relatively short period, we remember more time. That period will, at least in my brain, seem a lot longer that it actually was. But if there are few notable memories, we will remember less time, and things will feel like they’ve zipped by.

I’m pretty sure that, deep down, this is why I travel. I become terrified when I look back on a few months and realize that time zipped by without anything of note leaving impressions on my memory. When I travel or live abroad, each day is jam packed. A week can feel like forever.

And, you know, I want to squeeze as much time, relative or not, out of my life.