It's about Time

And personal choices

Over the past year, I've found myself being increasingly aware of the existential (I've always wanted to use that word!) force of time. For example, my attention span for Facebook, Twitter (aka X), and cute pet videos is about as long as that of a fruit fly (which is 4 seconds max).

Wondering if I was slowly skidding into early onset senility, I did what all great researchers do – I Googled "Time age perception" and, satisfied I am not rolling downhill, crumbled up my application for residency at the Last Stop Board and Care Home. Of course, the idea would not have entered my mind at a younger age. But now that I'm old enough to be a great-grandmother (if one of those grandkids would step up to parenthood), it's only natural to consider some of the less pleasant aspects of aging. Such as far more life-time in the past than in the future.

Smart people who get paid to write unintelligible, lengthy, scholarly papers on the time clock ticking in the human brain allowed me to remove my finger from the panic button. Not because I completely grasped the concepts of physicists but because one of our favorite big brains seems to have settled the problem of passing time – Albert Einstein. In 1905 the man with famous fly-away white hair put forth his Theory of Special Relativity. Prior to his research, science thought of time as a "single independent force … governed by a single clock." But Einstein brought together time and space to create the theory of relativity – declaring that both time and space can be measured in relationship to gravitational forces "of objects within it." Isn't that just clear as mud to most of us? (Honestly, I added this historic detail just to make myself appear smarter than I am).

I find this statement from Web MD by Emily Shiffer far more relevant: "Time can feel like a roll of toilet paper – it unrolls faster and faster the closer you get to the end." Amen. And why is that we may ask? When we were children, time seemed to fly by with daily life inundated by new experiences. The developing brain is bombarded with information that helps us survive and steadily increase our capacity to manage our environment. We own and store the information without effort and move happily on to the next lesson.  

Children need to learn survival skills and develop individual responses that eventually create the adults they become. Interestingly, kids often perceive time as moving very slowly. For example, a year for a ten-year-old represents about 10 percent of a lifetime – time that seems to drag by. At 70-something, a year is less than two percent of a life span, and each year seems to pass more quickly than the last.  

The need to pay attention to input from life experience diminishes over the decades, and eventually, the training wheels come off, and we skate ahead with more speed and confidence. Demands on our time diminish – children are raised and gone, our careers are in the rearview mirror, and we are speeding into our final decades. We can calculate an 'end date.'

At 77, I've outlived my parents and grandparents. I feel strong and healthy (despite just having moved a household of furniture, old photos, and greeting cards, and clothes I'll never again wear). Still, without knowing what I was doing, I started eliminating activities and commitments that threaten to swallow precious time. And I suddenly understand my friend Mollie – who said her final goodbye at age 97 with a sharp brain and her sense of humor well intact.

Like me, all her friends were several decades younger than Mollie, and we felt gifted to have her company – parties, drives, adventures, events, dancing, singing – she did it all to her final days. I remember how a couple of us tried to get her more active on Facebook and other online communication shortcuts. She declined with a tart, "I don't have time for that.' And we sighed at her reluctance thinking technology would be a boon to her. But now, I not only understand Mollie's desire to limit screen time, I'm following her example. Because her choice was to interact with flesh and blood life and leave bytes and bits to folks who have plenty of time to squander.

Grappling with a new understanding of my post on the lifetime spectrum, I've chosen to eliminate activities that do no more than devour time. That don't teach me anything new. That eat up hours better spent on activities I love with people I care about. Aging experts also advise we seek out new pleasures that allow us to again feel inspired, interested, creative – and make time fly in a good way.

Among those activities are writing – sharing my random thoughts with you, and enjoying your feedback. I mostly do this in the morning when I feel energetic, curious, and connected to the wider world. Mid-afternoon, I'm in my studio working with clay and wax, my mind drifting and spirit uplifted. All this with zero X, Instagram, or any platform that invites me to topple down a rabbit hole of images and words that devour my time and leave me feeling empty. Like Mollie, I'm not an aging Luddite – just choosing how to live the final years of life on my own terms.

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Thanks for spending time with me. I’m appreciating you and the many kind, thoughtful people I’ve encountered through this weekly time with you. I’m particularly grateful to Karen Duncan - a brilliant woman who is good enough to edit my column and make me look smarter than I am.

I’m hoping you are all safe and sound from the weather extremes that are currently plaguing our planet - record rain and winds, wildfires, dangerous temperatures. But if you’re stuck indoors, remember I wrote a book that’s ideal for downtime. The Song of JackassCreek - a mountain mystery with wonderful reviews! Take care - Darby