There’s always time to think about how there’s no time to think

I miss-read my flight information last night and ended up arriving at the airport an hour earlier than needed. So I’ve got some time to burn and some thoughts to think. Last night while I was working at the Ethiopian restaurant, I glanced at the clock at 7:30 and, for whatever reason, thought that it said 8:30. An hour later I looked at it again and saw that it was still 8:30, and realized my mistake. What this meant was that I had just lived an extra hour of life. An in-between segment of time, sandwiched like an invisibly thin slice of deli meat between two thick pieces of bread, un-noticed by the entire world except the person eating the sandwich, who is extremely perplexed as to why their plain bread sandwich tastes like it has a roast beef center.

The concept of time came about later that night as well, when I set and re-set my alarm for 4:30 AM, making doubly sure that it was indeed set for AM and not PM, and that I left the sound on so I’d wake up. It’s our team’s sponsor camp/get to know each other weekend. We have some big plans for the upcoming season and some exciting things going on this weekend as well, which I can only hope includes an all you can eat eating contest at Home Town Buffet. I will win the S outa that S.

When my alarm went off this morning I had a strict time plan for leaving the house no later than 4:50, to ride my bike downtown to the bus station, where I’d catch the bus to the airport in Denver. The temperature of my oats delayed things by about 10 minutes, but I got to the bus station on time anyways. 9 minutes early actually.

Finally, with the time obsession over for a little while, I had time to reflect on all the time I’d been dealing with as I attempted to drift off to sleep for the hour-thirty bus ride. Sleep did not come, likely from the two giant cups of coffee I’d consumed (coffee being another time-expander, kind of like miss-reading the clock-miss). My thoughts began on the subject of moving and living in new places. I began wondering how it was possible that I’ve been in Boulder for two months now, and can already feeling the nomadic athlete’s foot in my souls itching away at my feet. Just two months ago I was on this same bus, heading from the airport up to Boulder with a backpack, a duffle bag, and a bike, and without a clue where I was going to live or if I’d be able to find a job in time before my money ran out and I had to head back to my parent’s house with my tail between my legs. Luckily for me, though, moving is a lot easier than for most people. Not having spent more than four months in one place in the past three years, I’ve successfully avoided creating any concrete social network to tie me down. No real job, no girlfriend, no friends…man life is good when you’re a nomad. Jokes aside, it’s pretty satisfying to be able to pack your life on your back, head off to a new place, and make a name for yourself.

The name I’ve made for myself is not at all what I had hoped for back when I was in high school. It’s hard to live up to your dreams, though surprisingly non-disappointing when you don’t, since your dreams constantly change. My life goals back in high school were to A) ride my bike down to Costa Rica, B) become a professional rock climber and or white water kayaker and or runner, C) write for the National Geographic about my professional climbing/kayaking/running, and D) at some point in my life, go live and hunt with a wolf pack for a year or two up in Alaska. Only one of these things remains as a goal of mine, so while the past Kennett may be disappointed to learn I’m no longer on his chosen path, present Kennett is okay with things for now.

I don’t think it’s ever healthy to be fully satisfied with things though. You know in movies where someone says, “I have no fear of death; I’ve lived a full life with no regrets and achieved everything a man can hope for.” Usually he escapes said impending death and lives happily ever after, but regardless, I don’t buy it. Being completely satisfied with one’s life would mean that if you died tomorrow, you wouldn’t really care. And if this is the case, you might as well just get it over with today and shoot yourself in the head. This is why I think suicides shouldn’t be frowned upon, because suicidal people must actually be more content with their lives than the rest of us, agreeing with Death that they’ve accomplished everything they set out to accomplish and spending any more time here on earth showing up the rest of us would just be brash waste of time.

Time again. It’s almost time to board my plane, but more importantly, it’s time to think about what my life goals have changed to since graduating high school. It’s too difficult to come up with any real long term goals (I’m talking more than five years), but for the short term I’m keeping them the same as they’ve been since 2008: race my bike and race good enough to make a minimum wage living at it. It seems a simple, unimportant goal in the grand scheme of things. But looking around here in the airport one con see that just about no one has anything important to do. Everyone most likely thinks they’re important, especially while at the airport. Business people think they’re important because they’re getting paid to travel somewhere and do business things, families on vacation think they’re important because they can afford to travel by air and go spend time somewhere different (and therefor better) than where they currently reside, and all these athletic teams, cub scouts squads, spelling B students and whoever all these people are in matching sweat suits–they all think they’re important because they’re part of a big group. Kind of like why a country thinks it’s important.

From what I’ve gathered from my observations on society, a person’s importance resides in a very easily quantifiable derivative based on any one of these things: # of babies made, # of dollars made, # would-be babies made save for birth control, # watts produced on a bike, # of cheeseburgers eaten. Most people seem to have chosen the last option, which was my second choice to be honest.

Well, I have to cut it short before I come to any real conclusion about any of this. Time, life goals, the importance of an individual in a world so vast it can’t accurately count its inhabitance, let alone decide on how to distribute the goods amongst ourselves (it’s like we’re all cats living in a crazy cat lady’s home and for some reason she decides to feed some of us way too much and some of us not nearly enough–just for fun to see what happens–she IS crazy after all). Anyways, I just don’t have the time right now. Not even enough to spellcheck this sucker. Time to board.