Happy Holidays To All Of You From All Of Us
December 8, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Well, 2025 is almost in the rear view mirror, as hard as that may be to believe. And thank heavens for the holidays – they are literally holy days – that give us a chance to reflect on the year and to spend precious time with family and friends.
As the years go by, time seems to run faster and faster, but that is, in part, an illusion that is caused by the cycle time of the real neural network in your head and decreasing differentiation among functional areas in our brains. Neurons fire less often as we age, and special functional areas get less good at the kind of processing they developed early in life. This gives the illusion of time moving faster. Or, for all we know, time really does move faster. . . .
Which makes it all the more precious. I talk to a lot of people as part of my work, and when someone asks me why it is taking me so long to get a story done, I often quip that I wish I had more time because I like what I do and I could do more. What I need, I explain, is not a time machine that lets me go backward and forward in time, but rather a machine that generates more time right here, within a second, that lets me keep moving and doing while the world around me moves so slowly by comparison that I can get caught up, do things thoroughly, not roughly; to take more than a moment to really reflect on something. Even a hundred years is going to be too short for all the things I want to see and do and know and feel. Four hundred might be enough. . . . <wink>
But, I will take what is given here on this lovely planet of Earth, whose beauty is more breathtaking than the deepest sadnesses we all must get through as we live. I am glad we have each other, that we can sing and dance, and rejoice in every baby that is born, in every breath inhaled and exhaled, to witness those who have lived and remember them when they are gone. Existence is so improbable, making it all the more precious. To be was never a question. It is always a statement. The original testament, always new through each of us in our turn.
Wherever you are on Earth, whenever you are in your journey, we are glad to be here with you, being useful to each other in our work. It is a privilege to serve, to have purpose and therefore meaning. To have a task, and to do it. To get to dinner hungry and to go to bed tired and to awaken each day, more or less rested, to do it again with the grace that is warm coffee.
So we wish you all a happy holiday season, and we look forward, as always, to serving you in the new year. And as always, if you have news, tell us about it so we can tell everyone in the IBM i community.
