Oddly, long periods of time go by faster than short ones. From the vantage of Monday morning, Friday evening seems hopelessly distant, yet on turning thirty, eighteen feels like a minute ago. The hours creep but the years fly. Look closer and you find that the years fly because the hours creep. The slow repetition of days and weeks lulls us into thinking time is stationary, then one day we find the days have made a decade. The train left the platform too quietly to notice, and now we glance up to see our hometown gone, new country all around us.

Plato taught that appearances change while underlying reality remains unchanged. It is exactly the opposite. Appearances seem stable, but the ground beneath us is shifting.