As I woke up yesterday morning, I found myself in that wondrous state between sleep and wakefulness – hypnopompia – when one's consciousness freewheels and random thoughts pop up out of nowhere. In this state, I was mentally going through all the things I had to do before I got on the train to my physio appointment, when all of a sudden the following thought emerged in my mind: “What is my relationship with time?”
Wow. Profound. Well, what is it?
If there were a one word answer, it would be 'inconsistent'. In general, time gets me to act. When there's a deadline, I'll get my arse in gear. I prepare – mentally, or on paper – a list of what has to be done by a given time, and assign priorities. The nearer the deadline, the sharper my focus. But if there's no deadline? Problematic, I'd say. Putting off until tomorrow is something I do all too often. That dripping gutter? It's been eight years now. I really should get it sorted... But there's no pressure. It'll still be dripping tomorrow, next week, next month. Next year?
Phone the cardiologist at 08:30 because she's forgotten to send me my e-prescription? No problem. I'm on to it. Two hours later I get an SMS with the code, half an hour after that I'm in the chemist's picking up the prescription, all in good time to catch my train. Shopping done. Cats fed. Everything sorted. Friday has worked out perfectly. And over 16,000 paces racked up.
But where are those books I was going to write and publish? Some other day, maybe. Autumn clean-up in the garden? Nah, I'd rather go for a walk and watch the sun set. Well, at least I'm writing this blog.
I ponder about the power that deadlines always have had over me. Am I time's servant, or time's master? Depends. I've only ever failed one exam in my life (Latin O-level). Give me an exam to swot for, a train to catch, an article to finish, an appointment to keep, and everything snaps into place. Take away that fixed point in the future, and time becomes an amorphous, gloopy substance, something that stretches out indefinitely, with no particular reason to do anything now rather than later.
Is time something in the background, something we swim through, as fish swim through a flowing river? Or is it a human construct, a framework that allows us to arrange events into a meaningful sequence – past, present and future?
The amount of time available to me is not indefinite. Far from it. I am surrounded by digital clocks (the ones in my bedroom and car both set to summer time the year round). Yet our subjective experience of time is anything but precise. Four minutes spent holding the plank seems painfully interminable; an hour spent in fascinating conversation vanishes in an instant.
There's a theory that our perception of time accelerates as we grow older because each successive year represents an ever-smaller fraction of the life we've already lived. For a five-year-old, a year is a fifth of their entire experienced existence; for a 70-year-old, it's a mere seventieth. Yet this doesn't fully explains the phenomenon – after all, one seventieth isn't that much smaller a fraction than a sixtieth, and yet time seems to be galloping much faster than it did a decade ago.
Our biological future shrinks as we age, but not at a steady pace. At 20, one can reasonably imagine having another 60 years ahead. Approaching 70, the arithmetic looks different. This ought to focus the mind. If a deadline at work can make me so efficient, surely the ultimate deadline – the end of biological existence – should make me the most purposeful and productive version of myself imaginable? Somehow it doesn't.
There's the 'energy' excuse. It's no longer purely a matter of motivation, but of the fuel to keep running at the same pace I used to when I was in my thirties and forties. I understand life far better than I did back then. And this makes me think of people in their thirties and forties who do manage to get books written and gutters fixed, and have already acquired wisdom through reading more, listening more, thinking more deeply, having managed to do so at a young age. More focus? More self-discipline? More drive? More energy?
I still put off fixing the gutter. I still haven't written those books. I still find myself choosing to go for a walk rather than wash the dishes.
Perhaps the biological clock isn't all that important. My body is merely the container of my consciousness. If one believes – as I do with a high degree of certainty – that consciousness is fundamental, and that my experience of existence will persist beyond bodily death, then time pressures and deadlines ease. The ego becomes less important. What will appear on the next epitaph is meaningless in the scale of eternity.
Is an hour spent walking through the autumn countryside, watching the leaves fall, listening to the cranes overhead, observing the slow transition from one season to the next, an hour wasted? Is sitting in the kitchen watching the cats interact with one another, doing nothing more productive than enjoying their company, a poor use of my remaining biological time?
There's a difference between spending time and experiencing it. One can approach the spending of time as one does the spending of money; a finite resource. There's a difference between cramming the hours with activity, and being fully conscious of those hours as they pass. A day filled with completed tasks may be satisfying, but a day being aware of the world around me can be every bit as valuable.
The real challenge as we age is not to jam more and more into the time we have left, but to become more discerning about what truly deserves that time.
If the choice is between tidying the kitchen and going for a walk on a glorious autumn afternoon, with the sun low in the sky and the last leaves glowing golden against the darkening forest, I know which I'll choose.
This time last year:
Banksy in Warsaw
This time 11 years ago:
Remembrance Sunday, Northolt
This time 16 years ago:
Death on the tracks
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