Millennium

I’ve always felt that, experientially, time passed very slowly during the early 2000s.

But in reality, I never truly experienced that era. I was born in 2004. By the time I began forming memories, many things were already fading away. Forums were slowly declining, MSN was being replaced. These things never really belonged to me in the first place; I just happened to catch the very tail end of them.

So, my memory of that era is somewhat pieced together.

Thinking back, it traces to being on a double-decker bus in Hong Kong. I would purposely go up to the upper deck and sit in the very front seat. The seat was high up, the view was wide open, and the entire street would slowly recede beneath your feet. When riding at night, streetlights would pass by one by one. There would be a slight reflection on the glass window; sometimes you’d see the street outside, and you’d also see your own face superimposed over it.

My earphones weren't really playing anything in particular, maybe just left on aimlessly.

But time would slow down. No one was waiting for you to reply to a message, and there was nothing that absolutely had to be done. You just sat there, watching the streets, the signboards, the passing pedestrians, shifting bit by bit.

That kind of movement had weight to it.

The same feeling also emerged on rainy days. Puddles flooded the roads. Stepping into the water, your shoes would grow heavier bit by bit, creating a slight sense of drag as you walked. The rainwater slid down against your skin. It was cold, but it didn't make you want to hide from it.

It was actually just a very ordinary day. But for some reason, they stayed with me.

Time back then seemed more willing to pause for a moment. Joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness all had their own rhythms; they wouldn't be interrupted, nor did they need to be digested immediately. You could simply stay in the present, letting a thing slowly begin, and slowly end.

Later, I moved to New York. Sometimes taking the subway, an entire train car of people would be looking down, scrolling on their phones. I was one of them. You feel like time passes so fast. Station after station arrives, but you can't really articulate what happened in between.

It’s as if every stretch of time has been sliced into tiny, tiny fragments. Once used up, it’s gone.

Life now is fast. So fast that before an emotion can even take shape, it's already overwritten by the next piece of content. You think you’ve been constantly experiencing things, but much of it actually leaves no shape behind.

Over time, it wears you down. Not because you’ve done too many things, but because everything is too smooth, too full, too devoid of pauses.

One time in New York, I waited for the subway for a long time, and my phone happened to be dead. I couldn’t do anything; I could only stand on the platform.

Those few minutes were actually very long. Long enough that I started to hear the sound of the wind blowing out from the tunnel, and the vibration of a train slowly approaching from afar. At that moment, I suddenly felt that this time of "being able to do nothing" seemed very far away from me, yet hadn't completely vanished.

It’s just that we rarely give it the chance to surface anymore.

The millennium era ended long ago, and it won't return. Nor do I really want to go back. I just occasionally wonder if that slow kind of time, time not used to prove anything, can still be found, just a little bit, in the present.

Like sitting in a car, not listening to music. Like when it rains, not rushing to leave. Like doing nothing at all, just spacing out for a while.

Those unrecorded, unshared moments are actually very quiet. But it seems that it's only in moments like those that we feel a little less tired.

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