Fear of Time?

     Connecting to your past can leave you feeling empowered and inspired. Maybe you find you are descended from a great war hero or a queen of Franks. Perhaps you are the great-great-great-great-great.... 26 "great"s later grandchild of a princess of Persia or maybe even the descendant of Genghis Khan himself. The people who came before us on the journey help to shaped who we believe we are, but don't forget to live in the present.
     Sometimes when I am deeply involved in genealogy research I start getting panic attacks. I begin to think about my parents and their grandparents and my brain begins to go back through the family tree. At this point an image appears. I usually envision my mother and my father as children. I see their grandparents in my mind's eye. As the old poem goes, "Stop ye traveler as you pass by. As you are now so once was I. As I am now soon you must be. Prepare yourself to follow me."
     I imagine the pain of seeing the older generations die around you. True I have lost many friends and all of my grandparents, but there's something different about my parents current age. Their parents are gone almost ten years now and they are the generation slowly moving towards death. I am not sure if it's death I'm afraid of or the concept of slowly creeping towards that eventual end. I think I've always been frightened, since I was very young, of the concept of not having enough time.
     My fear has gotten worse as my own life has gotten better. For years I did not fear death. I believed in reincarnation. If I lost this life I would simply move on to the next one. I still believe that, but for the first time in this life I am eager to hang on to my current moment in time. I think that inspires my panic. I know that I am a good forty to fifty years from that eventual end, but time seems to creep up on me quickly and I worry about not having enough time to soak in all the experiences of life. I wonder, am I the only one who feels this way? Or are there others who have the flash forwards as they dive deeper into the past? Only time can help me to face my fear, for it is time itself that is my enemy.