Dave Kearns just commented on a Facebook photo of me at Richfield (Idaho) High School graduation, asking, “were we ever that young?”.

Great question, Dave.  It is hard to believe, but yes, over 40 years ago, when the photo of that skinny, dark-haired earlier me was taken, I was young.

That made me think of a theory I have about the relativity of time.  Do you remember when you were 5 years old?   Back then, I measured years from Christmas to Christmas.  It seemed that it took forever for another Christmas to come around.

But when I was 5 years old, a full twenty percent of my life had to pass before another Christmas would come.  Relative to my life experience, it did take a long time.

Now, however, only 1.7% of my life passes between Christmases. (You can figure out the math). And every year, the percentage becomes smaller.  If I live long enough, the time between Christmases will approach zero.

In the mean time, I can be thankful for the fact that I really once was that young, and can revel in the current reality that my youngest daughter is now a senior in high school, having experiences akin to what I had 40 years ago, and that my grandchildren are also learning to spread their wings and fly!

It has been reported that Albert Einstein explained his theory of relativity this way:

If you spend two hours speaking with a beautiful woman, you feel, at the end of the two hours that you’ve spent only two minutes with her; while if you spend two minutes sitting on hot tin, you feel you’ve spent two days!

I recently stumbled across a graph that seemed to convey the same message:

Perhaps these examples will work for those who have never spent time with a beautiful woman.