Libman: Wait a minute — where did the time go?
The passage of time is something that I have been thinking about more and more of late, trying to make sense of it all.
One can be sitting in a waiting room or stuck in traffic agonizing over how long every minute seems to take. On a long trip, moving from A to B, you can only wait patiently, like staring at an hourglass until your destination. Yet, oddly enough, when you look back in time, everything seems accelerated.
I graduated from McGill 40 years ago this summer. It seems impossible that it's been that long as I remember so vividly many memories and specifics from those days. How daunting it is to project the same time frame — which doesn't seem so long ago — into the future and realize I'll be (hopefully!) over 100 years old, for heaven's sake.
The sense of aging first hit me when I started to realize that police officers, or professional hockey players, say, could be younger than me — and later, even judges and the like. There are teachers I remember from high school who seemed like old men, yet were younger than I am now.
When I became involved in politics and elected to the National Assembly in 1989, I was in my 20s without any political experience. Some commentators were condescending, with one in particular — my predecessor on this Opinion page actually — often gleefully referring to me as 'little Bobby.' (That wouldn't get past my editor today!) But by the time I ran for Stephen Harper's Conservatives in 2015, I was described as the older, experienced politician.
For much of my work life, whether in provincial or municipal politics, the private sector or in the community, I always seemed to be the young guy. Then suddenly, I'm not sure when, there's that hinge moment where I am now seen as the vieux routier around the office.
When looking in the rear-view mirror (or a regular mirror, for that matter) it's hard not to wonder how and when did this sneak up on you.
We somehow end up on this Earth and before we know it, we have less time left than the time we've already spent. It's a crapshoot, of course, as none of us can know how long we will have. We can strive to be healthy and increase the odds of a longer life, but sadly we can't anticipate illness or other accidental circumstances beyond our control.
Our time here is finite, and then our departure is infinite. It makes you question why we take certain things to heart and fight among ourselves about politics, for example. Forced language laws, immigration rules, constitutional debates and so on rarely alter social realities in significant ways. With the passage of time, societies evolve naturally. Attempts at social engineering breed conflict and diminish valuable individual relationships and quality of life as so much energy is sucked out of us.
A few years ago, I attended an event of former MNAs and sat for dinner with some Parti Québécois hardliners who were very combative back then and used to make my skin crawl. Many of them are now elderly and frail. No one can escape Father Time. We talked about those exhausting debates and how many of the same battles are still being fought today. Given where we were now — discussing families, health and the passage of time — much of it seemed so insignificant in the larger scheme of things.
Time is a precious resource that we too often take for granted. It's time we start using it more wisely.
Robert Libman is an architect and planning consultant who has served as Equality Party leader and MNA, mayor of Côte-St-Luc and a member of the Montreal executive committee.
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I was blown away last weekend by reports that it's been 35 years since the 1990 Oka Crisis, the standoff that dominated our news cycle that summer. It's also hard to believe last Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of the Live Aid benefit concert for famine relief. The passage of time is something that I have been thinking about more and more of late, trying to make sense of it all. One can be sitting in a waiting room or stuck in traffic agonizing over how long every minute seems to take. On a long trip, moving from A to B, you can only wait patiently, like staring at an hourglass until your destination. Yet, oddly enough, when you look back in time, everything seems accelerated. I graduated from McGill 40 years ago this summer. It seems impossible that it's been that long as I remember so vividly many memories and specifics from those days. How daunting it is to project the same time frame — which doesn't seem so long ago — into the future and realize I'll be (hopefully!) over 100 years old, for heaven's sake. The sense of aging first hit me when I started to realize that police officers, or professional hockey players, say, could be younger than me — and later, even judges and the like. There are teachers I remember from high school who seemed like old men, yet were younger than I am now. When I became involved in politics and elected to the National Assembly in 1989, I was in my 20s without any political experience. Some commentators were condescending, with one in particular — my predecessor on this Opinion page actually — often gleefully referring to me as 'little Bobby.' (That wouldn't get past my editor today!) But by the time I ran for Stephen Harper's Conservatives in 2015, I was described as the older, experienced politician. For much of my work life, whether in provincial or municipal politics, the private sector or in the community, I always seemed to be the young guy. Then suddenly, I'm not sure when, there's that hinge moment where I am now seen as the vieux routier around the office. When looking in the rear-view mirror (or a regular mirror, for that matter) it's hard not to wonder how and when did this sneak up on you. We somehow end up on this Earth and before we know it, we have less time left than the time we've already spent. It's a crapshoot, of course, as none of us can know how long we will have. We can strive to be healthy and increase the odds of a longer life, but sadly we can't anticipate illness or other accidental circumstances beyond our control. Our time here is finite, and then our departure is infinite. It makes you question why we take certain things to heart and fight among ourselves about politics, for example. Forced language laws, immigration rules, constitutional debates and so on rarely alter social realities in significant ways. With the passage of time, societies evolve naturally. Attempts at social engineering breed conflict and diminish valuable individual relationships and quality of life as so much energy is sucked out of us. A few years ago, I attended an event of former MNAs and sat for dinner with some Parti Québécois hardliners who were very combative back then and used to make my skin crawl. Many of them are now elderly and frail. No one can escape Father Time. We talked about those exhausting debates and how many of the same battles are still being fought today. Given where we were now — discussing families, health and the passage of time — much of it seemed so insignificant in the larger scheme of things. Time is a precious resource that we too often take for granted. It's time we start using it more wisely. Robert Libman is an architect and planning consultant who has served as Equality Party leader and MNA, mayor of Côte-St-Luc and a member of the Montreal executive committee.
