The passing of time

One of the things that scares me most in life is the passing of time. I am in my 40s now and have lived a fairly full life for a human latino male coming from the Bronx. I am now decades older than one of my then older friends was when he was shot and killed on the streets.

These days with so much available to us in pictures both past and present we can see the span of decades in the blink of an eye. You can scroll through a few pictures and observe the entire career of a long dead personality. You could see Michael Jackson as a child, a teen, a young adult, an older adult, and then gone.

You can watch Mike Tyson go from being on top of the world while threatening to eat children like the Gods of old, to a high, mellow, funny, easy going podcaster who’s grown by leaps and bounds.

Such a thing happened to me today with the featured picture here. I saw this post where my friend shared this beautiful tiger cub and then wondered about their life span. I went into the comments to see the discussion around it and came across this image.

Just like that I realized that I saw the beginning of life and in the span of a few seconds this cub went through not only the full extent of its adulthood, it has possibly already transitioned to the next tiger realm.

This was actually kind of fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. I figuratively time traveled through the life of this tiger. I mean I just saw this picture of this beautiful brand new life for the first time ever, then 3 comments later I realized that this life is likely no more.

Over a decade has passed from when this beautiful moment was captured, from a tiger’s perspective, that’s a lifetime. This cute little creature has lived their whole life and has since died or is very close to dying. This whole dynamic just filled and then broke my heart within a 10 second span.

In any case, if you’d like to read about my own personal encounter with a tiger (terrifying) check this out post!