Time thoughts

The other day, I was walking along thinking about some events from earlier in my life—maybe 20 years ago—and I realized that I had a totally different take on these happenings than I’d had back then. “What a difference time makes,” I thought to myself. That, in turn, brought to mind several recent encounters with the phrase “the tincture of time,” and I was off on a tangent pondering how time changes reality.

Of course we all know that time itself changes drastically as we age. At this point in my life, it seems to rush by—and not just when I’m having fun, either. I’ve actually written here before about some of the explanations that folks have offered for that phenomenon—the way time speeds up as we age. So I won’t dwell on it again (but if you’re curious, just click here  for a trip back in time to that blog). Instead, I want to talk about time, not as a changing phenomenon but as a change agent—something that actually does things to the world as we know it. Which is to say, it does things to our worlds.

It all started when the phrase “tincture of time” came to mind. But I knew that the transformation in my view of those earlier experiences wasn’t about time acting as a tincture. It wasn’t healing old wounds. This was more about time acting as a lens. Pretty soon, I was pondering on several phrases that point to how time changes reality:

The tincture of time. An old saw. I’m not sure whether time heals all wounds (as many of us have likely been told), but I’ve lately been learning that patience and forbearance—i.e., time—ease the sting of many of them. It’s a valuable lesson that not only makes painful experiences feel less totally devastating but also keeps me from exacerbating problems that are better left to settle. When things really aren’t, on second thought, a big deal, often settle if I don’t stir them around like a pot of smelly stew. The tincture of time. Or, as Lennon and McCartney famously urged, let it be.

The lens of time. This one fits the experience that started my ruminations. For some reason, I discovered myself viewing old experiences through a new lens. Actions by others that had bothered me back in the day now seemed to have actually been kind and generous—my old view of them now looked like a product of my own self-absorption at the time, a result of a flawed lens. It reminded me, as I reflected on it, of how a camera lens does this. Cameras don’t see the world like our eyes do. Big things recede, small things come into focus, reality is morphed by the properties of the lens—or the properties of time. And the world changes.

The veil of time. Time hides some things and leaves others open to view. Things that seemed so clear at one point slip from memory, and we don’t even recognize their absence. I was talking to a 13-year-old the other day, who wondered whether we had ever visited him in his home state. We had, many times, so I reminded him of several of those. He flat-out didn’t recall most of them. I could attribute this to his young age, but the one thing he did recall was an experience as a 4-year-old when we persuaded some firefighters on a lunch break to show him their truck, up-close and personal. How many of my experiences have slipped from view without my noticing? And what does it do to my understanding of the world and my life—how would my reality change if memory X had vanished rather than memory Y?

Now, the idea the time itself actually shapes reality isn’t an especially novel or startling concept, although I do think it somehow takes on more salience as I age. Probably because time is so different, now, in unforeseen ways. This is the first time, for instance, that I’ve ever been so totally, suddenly aware—to the point of surprise—that time has dramatically reshaped my understanding of a long-ago event. Without any effort on my part and without my even noticing the process, until the new version cropped up, unbidden, as I walked to the gym one morning.

Then I started thinking about all the ways that our language about time also shapes our reality. I once ran into a discussion of this, framed in terms of a personality typology. But separating it from that theoretical framework, just think about how different our encounter with time is when we talk, for instance, about spending time instead of about wasting it. Losing time vs. investing time. Finding time to do something or losing track of time while we’re doing something. So many words … devoting time, preserving time, making time, protecting, using, taking time … and on and on. Each one says something about the meaning of time—as a treasure, a nuisance, a commodity, a barrier, a burden, a creation, an opening.

What difference would it make, I wondered, if I made a conscious effort to use positive words when I think or talk about time. Now that sounds like an interesting experiment.

I don’t know quite where all this is leading, what I’m trying to say to you. I need to spend some time thinking about this. Maybe that’s all this blog is really for—a reminder to pay more attention to time and its place in my life and my language.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Time and things

I’ve been thinking about time lately. Especially about how it stretches and collapses depending on the context. For the past several weeks, for instance, I’ve been preoccupied with some (exciting) tasks related to my role as the novice “organizing maven” with Resonance Women’s Chorus. So preoccupied that I’ve seemed unable to muster any creative energy for anything else—like thinking up radio shows or writing a blog. Even when I've had time, it's seemed like I haven't had any energy. Like I’m out of neuron juice.

So, it was against this background—thinking about how time is such a fluid, non-concrete thing—that I came across this Smithsonian article about technologies and how they shape our lives. The article is actually about "wearables"—that class of gadgets that put up-scale, cutting edge technology in our clothing and wrist wear and eyeglasses. Like google glasses, a wearable that takes the form of a small computer on your face. Or smart watches, smaller versions of your smartphone that you wear on your wrist, so you can check email or text your pals without that awkwardly rude habit of pulling out your phone. And those discrete wristbands that track all manner of physiological and exercise data as folks go about their daily lives.

Not surprisingly, these wearable gadgets have their detractors. Do we really need to check our email, texts, or tweets so often that we wear the screen on our wrists? Can't it wait?! Or what does this do to face-to-face social interaction? What about the people you're with? And just how far will we go in letting technology rule our lives and consume our attention?

The Smithsonian article points out that this is actually an old debate. The first "wearable" technology to elicit this sort of backlash was, it turns out, that lowly personal adornment, the watch. Clocks of the larger sort had been around for centuries, announcing time via church bells and town criers, before watches arrived. But time—that is, clock time—didn't actually become so central to our lives until we could carry it with us. Then, starting in the mid-19^th century, the astonishing convenience offered by watches—the ability to coordinate business transactions, deliveries, or social activities—made them first handy, then important, then essential. It’s not that time itself changed, but how we understood and used it did. Because of this thing, this technology.

Changing how we understand and use time matters. So, not surprisingly, watches stirred a serious debate. Some folks argued that we had become beholden to our technology, more concerned about being on time than about spending our time well. Humanists suggested that, although watches may have made us more efficient, to quote the Smithsonian article, "perhaps total efficiency is a creepy goal for everyday life"—a fairly common assessment among certain sub-cultures in our own society.

So, as I was reading this article and thinking about time, into this mix came two conversations with friends. One was with a friend who's working with me on building the new Resonance website (one of the aforementioned tasks). We were waiting for something to download, bemoaning how long it took. And then she reminded us both (or maybe just me) how we used to wait for minutes for a dial-up internet connection and then wait for minutes more before we could actually do anything online. And now, if it takes seconds to download a complex file, we feel like we're wasting time.

In the second conversation, another friend and I were talking about the pleasure of being in the wilderness (difficult as that is to find these days), away from the usual markers of time, other than the cycles of the days and the rhythms of our bodies. Our discussion brought to mind a story I once heard about how differently time is understood by the Inupiat in northern Alaska, who spend months without real darkness and months without notable sunlight. Time, for them, isn't measured by day and night, as it is for those of us who distinguish between daytime and nighttime activities. For the Inupiat, "time" resides in the needs of the moment and of the season, not in a clock face, which is indifferent to the sunlight and darkness, the frozen tundra and thawing rivers that shape their lives.

So, I thought, maybe there's a lesson here in watches and google glasses and the relativity of time. Maybe the problem is that I’m thinking of time “spent” or “lost” too much in terms of the technology of clocks and calendars and too little in terms of the flow of my life. Maybe I’ve become so attached to the things that inform me of time’s passing and have lost touch with the experience of time flowing, as it does for the Inupiat. Wristwatches and smart phones are just things. They may display time or social connection, but “time” doesn't live on a watch face, and "social connection" doesn't live on a smartphone screen.

So maybe, I thought, this carries a lesson about my recent problem with time—i.e., the trouble I’ve had finding time and energy to do things that I really love doing—like blogging and conjuring up radio shows. Because maybe it's not really about time but about framing and relativity and multiple, shifting realities.

In truth, the time available to me hasn't changed a lot. Yes, I have taken on a new set of tasks. But I've taken on new and demanding roles before and not dropped out of the blogosphere. Maybe the change isn’t in time but in the context of time, its framing. Now, it's true that no newly minted hours have dropped from the sky marked "Blog now!" But neither have I sought out the time, created it, carved it from other things because I wanted to do this more than that. Maybe I've been confusing finding time to blog with making time to blog. Which is simply the difference between asking whether I have time and asking how I want to use my time.

Seen in this light, the fact that I've been so busy on another task—which I'm loving—isn't an obstacle to blogging. Instead, it's another expression of the reasons that I blog—to stay engaged, to stay relevant, to keep my mind and my voice alive. A temporary decline in blogging doesn't mean my space in the blogosphere has spun off into a different universe. It'll still be around whenever I create time to visit. And apparently, if this particular blog is any indication, I can visit at will. This is actually a huge relief, because I love doing this and was starting to worry about my extended absence.

It’s a good reminder for me, this business about time and choice. Time is flexible, relative, contextual—and very much a matter of perspective. A mind trip to northern Alaska is a useful reminder of that.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Years

I’m surrounded these days by reminders that the digits on the calendar are about to change. Lists of the best of everything in 2013 and promises of what’s ahead in 2014. Requests for year-end donations and plans for the coming year. Looking back and looking ahead. I guess the same messages have always floated around as New Year’s Day approached. But as the years roll by, they seem more compelling and more confusing. I'm find balancing on the boundary a little dizzying. 

For instance …

On solstice evening, we went to a wonderful party with a group of women friends. We burned candles to bid farewell to things we’d like to release from our lives as we finish this year and candles to welcome things we’d like to bring into our lives instead. The sun turns in its path, finishing a cycle and beginning another. Around the same time, I learned that two people in my life, two of my age peers, are very ill. One is seeing her last new year, and the other may well be. And then I heard my partner’s grandson, about to turn 12, talk about something he did “a long time ago,” even as his journey has just begun. Almost surely, this transition is experienced by my two peers as the close of a year, hopefully one laced with good memories. And it is just as likely experienced by this boy as a step forward into new adventures. Ends and beginnings. 

The yin and yang of time. The edge of the year.

So what, I ask myself, is it to me? I know the “right” answer: it is what I make of it. But my experience of this edge feels more complex than that. I understand that I’m responsible for what I create of this year, within the limits that reality imposes. And I also know that reality does impose limits. Among these is the fact that as I grow older (which, by the way, we all do), the years ahead look different—as do the years behind.

You’ve probably heard it plenty, especially from old folks: time passes faster as we age. In fact, anyone of a certain age is likely to be thinking it right about now: I can’t believe how fast this year passed! Well, it seems that there is considerable evidence that this is true—i.e., that the older we get, the faster time seems to move. That applies to individual hours, and it definitely applies to whole years. Two questions come to mind: (1) Why? and (2) So what?

As for why … some folks argue that it’s because we have fewer novel experiences, and novel experiences are intrinsically more memorable than familiar ones. The early-20^th century philosopher/psychologist (who was also, by the way, a brilliant writer), said it well:

"In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day… Each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.” 

Recent neurological research seems to bear him out–although it does so far less poetically than William James. During childhood, it seems, we devote a lot of attention, which translates to a lot of neurological effort, to understanding and mastering the simplest bits of information, the most basic skills—more by far than we now remember having invested. But by adulthood, the brain has adapted to so many sorts of input, has learned to process so many things automatically, that events do in fact flow by without our noticing them. They become James’ “contentless units,” and the years collapse into one another as we look back through the telescope of time.

Another explanation is simply that each day, week, year is a smaller part of our total life’s experience, so of course it seems shorter, if only in relation to the whole. After all, one day to an 11-year-old would be approximately 1/4,000 of her life, while one day to a 66-year-old would be approximately 1/24,000 of hers. So it makes sense that a day—or a week or a year—would seem much longer to an 11-year old than to a 66-year old. Who hasn’t heard a pre-teen say something like, “Back when I was a kid …” Point made.

Turning the telescope around, focusing forward rather than backward, other folks argue that time seems to move so fast because we have fewer and fewer years ahead. Seen in this way, the years ahead seem so very precious. Of course each one seems to disappear faster—like coins to a poor person who has few versus a rich person who can’t imagine the end of wealth.

So, in the swirl of endings and beginnings, I’ve been thinking about this. This transition, this edge—is it an ending, the close of a year … or a beginning, the opening of one? Of course it’s both. But I mean psychologically, for me, which is it? Or, perhaps more to the point, which will it be?

First, I agree wholeheartedly with James’ suggestion that having new experiences and learning new things make the years richer and give them memorable content. I’ve learned that lesson (unfortunately, over and over) in my own life. Novel experiences create memories, and memories give a year an identity of sorts: “2013: the year when I did a weeklong astrophysics course, when I climbed Storm King Mountain,” etc. And when years have an identity, they don’t “grow hollow and collapse” on one another.

But I’m not sure that this phenomenon—as noteworthy and psychologically important as it is—explains why the present moment or the years ahead seem so short. That part of time’s collapse needs, for me, an additional explanation. And here, I think, the “fewer years ahead” interpretation fits. When I look at my parents’ life spans—both of them died of so-called natural causes—and consider that mine is likely to be roughly similar (fantasies to the contrary notwithstanding), I can make a rough guess about the time I have ahead. And then, if I count backward that many years, I’m stunned by how recent it seems. That many years ago, I was doing x and y—but those things seem so recent! Is that really all the time I have left?

And here rests the challenge, the "so what?"—at least for me. Because if that’s all the time I have left, I had better make it time worth living, within the limitations imposed by reality. Yet, my penchant is to coast, to slip into comfortable routines, as I did with such ease when the time ahead seemed endless. So, I ask myself, if I woke up tomorrow to the news that my time was up, would I be content with my life as I’m living it today? I’m not talking about creating a bucket list here. I’ve written before about the concerns I have about bucket lists. I’m not talking about fantasies I want to realize some day. I’m talking about reality, today. Am I spending this day in a way that would make me content if it were my last?

Let me take stock: my partner and I made plans last night to spend time with old friends from San Francisco later this week, and I’m looking forward to that. This morning, I’m wrapping up arrangements for an interview for my radio show next week, which is exciting. I took today off from my editing work, a gift to myself of a leisurely day, which gives me great (rare) pleasure. I’m writing this blog, which is always huge fun for me. I’ll run some errands. (OK, yuk. Necessary life maintenance. I can feel fine about that, if not excited.) I’ll take a walk in the beautiful Colorado sunshine. If I have time, I’ll work on another blog. This evening, I’ll join the other folks in our KGNU collective to do a show on queer events of the past year … and maybe look forward to next year a bit. (There it is again, that old year—new year thing.) OK, would that feel fine as my last day? Yes. And now, can I say that every day … OK, most days (granting reality the right to intrude)?

Because, now that I think about it, we don’t have years—old ones or new ones. We have days, minutes. The only thing that demarcates Wednesday from Tuesday will be the date, the digits on the calendar. There’s nothing magical there. It’s just a day, a date. We may invoke it as a moment for review and anticipation, but we could review and anticipate any day. And as the days grow fewer (as they do for all of us), it seems like we might want to pay attention to each one while we can.

I think I’ll go take that walk.

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Last Act in the Footlights

This week, I encountered two very (very!) different blogs about retirement and aging. First, a friend sent me an “Opinionator” blog from the New York Times with the inspiring title, “For Healthy Aging, a Late Act in the Footlights.” Later in the week, I heard a Fresh Air segment on NPR in which Terri Gross was interviewing the author of a blog called “The Voice of Aging Boomers.” A starker contrast is hard to imagine.

First, the “Late Act in the Footlights.” This blog points to the challenge that many of us faced as we approached retirement without the resources to support the exotic adventures we imagined as we dreamed of retirement. As the column frames it, “Absent money and a sense of possibilities, retirement can become more time to fill with television.” This is the theme of countless columns and blogs and articles on retirement: how to make your retirement (and/or aging in general) a rich and satisfying experience. That’s harder when you come to it with limited financial resources. But, as this article and many others (including this blog) have argued, it really is possible to find great joy in aging. 

This particular piece offers a range of novel ideas to fill the void of all that extra time that retirement dumps in our laps. Artists' colony, senior Olympics, collective film production, or community theater anyone? Most of the ideas mentioned here are the brainchildren of a program called EngAGE, which is located in LA. But there's no reason these ideas couldn't be exported to any place where someone has the time and energy to clone them (and maybe some capital to support the effort, I suppose). Check them out ... maybe you're the person to bring them to your town!

So far, so good … aging can indeed be full and rich and expansive (even in LA)!

And then I heard the Fresh Air interview, and another door on aging opened. “The Voice of Aging Boomers” is written by a man who has early-onset Alzheimer’s. His condition put him in an assisted living facility at the age of 52—far younger than most of the residents there, and younger than most of us at retirement. But retired he was, and living in assisted living with fully intact cognitive ability, no peers of his own age (or even his own generation), and many years ahead. Since he’s there, he has decided to use his aging years well. He has taken on a role as the “voice” of people living in what he describes as a setting filled with disability, dementia, despair, and death. Many people living in this circumstance are unable to speak—or speak clearly—for themselves, he argues. Many others are dismissed as simply old people who are somewhat demented or depressed or just lonely. But in fact, they are desperately in need of more genuine caring, honest attention, and thoughtful understanding and less patronizing, idealizing, de-individualizing, and dismissive treatment. So he has become the “voice of ambient despair.”

This is the other side of aging. For many of us, some part of our last years will be spent beyond the reach of artists colonies and community theater. Beyond, even, Sudoku and crosswords. The stark reality is that no matter how many almonds and blueberries we eat, no matter how many miles we walk or how many weights we lift, no matter how little we weigh, smoke, or drink and how much we exercise, sleep, or pray, we will all die. Relatively few of us will slip painlessly and quietly away in our sleep. Most won’t, as the currently popular slogan urges, “… skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, champagne in the other … screaming, ‘WOO HOO what a ride!’” Many of us will spend the last weeks, months, or even years of our lives not in theater or painting classes but in extended ill health. I know it’s a downer, but there it is.

So, I ask myself, how do we balance these two realities: Aging can be rich and expansive … and … Aging inevitably ends. Or, perhaps more accurately, how do we balance our reaction to these two realities? How do we both fully live now and fully accept that we will die? How can one mind and heart possibly contain both our wish to relish the time we have and the knowledge that one day—one finite day, a day with a date and weather, a day that’s someone’s birthday, someone’s wedding day—it will all simply stop?

Better minds than mine have contemplated this question since humans had minds for contemplating. In fact, some folks argue that this is what distinguishes humans from all other species: we have the ability to know we will die. For better (we can “get our affairs in order”) and for worse (we have to live with this realization, however we may try to ignore or deny it). Some folks have argued that this is one purpose served by a belief in an afterlife: we don’t have to accept that our life will stop if we are certain that it continues beyond the grave.

Whatever your position on these arguments, my personal experience is this: I am occasionally stunned by the reality that the years ahead keep getting fewer (and they're passing faster!), and I'm eager to live as fully as I can manage today. Ask me about this again if/when I find myself in assisted living, staring at a world that seems full of disability, dementia, despair, and death. I may find that eagerness less compelling. 

Until then, pass the chocolate and the (alcohol-free) champagne!

Time warp

Parkinson’s law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. My new law: Leisure time contracts no matter what you do. In fact, it vanishes.

Recently, I decided I needed to cut back on my workload in order to maintain my sanity (not to mention my car and my piles of filing and my medical appointments). So, I reduced my editing work to about half what I was doing before. This, I was sure, would free up time to do all the things I just haven’t been able to find time for. Like be retired.

This was my first week at this new lower work level. So far, the week has been a blur of running around all day and then coming home late in the afternoon to do my (reduced) load of work. I’m staying up late to finish it—even though I’m sure I was doing all of these other things even while I was working more.

Where did all that free time I imagined go?

This is so familiar. It’s what I said when I finished grad school and imagined all the free time to read non-required stuff. Then, I spent 30 years in a career where I pretty much read required stuff. So I took summers off, and imagined all that free time to read non-required stuff. Somehow, my summers flew by with no such free time. So, then I thought retirement would bring all this excess time to do bonbons and soap operas. Instead, I got so busy, the soap operas fell by the wayside before I even got started. As for the bonbons, who needs leisure time for that? Despite being “retired,” I discovered this great part-time work that involves reading required stuff. (A theme emerges here.) So, now I cut back on my workload so I could have more leisure time. I’ve let my magazines pile up and figured I could spend leisurely days filing papers, lunching with friends, and reading non-required stuff. Instead, I find leisure time has left the building.

So, where did this week disappear to? Let’s see … I caught up on emails with friends. I made several appointments and already kept a couple of them. I started a new “get fit” regime that will include visits to the gym (“Visits.” What a gentle  word for what happens at the gym). I did fail to finish one bit of required reading for a research meeting this evening.

Oh, yeah. And I got a new phone. The camera on my other one went totally haywire, and I’m really into taking pictures for this blog. So clearly, I needed a new phone. Anyone who has a smart phone knows that getting a new one is considerably more complicated than just activating the number. 

The dealer kindly transferred my contacts, but a lot were duplicated,  so that required some cleaning up. To do that, I was required to read stuff about how this gadget works. I had to do that online. There were virtually no printed instructions. I guess if you’re high-techie enough to get a smartphone, you have no further need of print media of any sort. Also, that transfer process didn’t include my calendar, which I consider the brain of my phone. How many hours does it take to fill in a calendar? All I can say is that this accounts for a lot of my missing time. And then there’s the whole process of “personalizing” the phone—which includes personalizing sounds, screens, icons, apps, widgets, and some other stuff that has clearly gone the way of those missing hours.

So, anyhow, the phone is finally up and running. Although I still find myself wondering whether this is the phone I want. It’s actually fine. In fact, it’s totally excellent, technologically speaking (as if I knew enough to judge). But it’s biggish and clunky. Too bad, Janis. Two-year contract, and I sure I can’t afford the cost of changing it. Nor am I sure I’d want to if I could. I ask myself, would I rather have a larger, clunky phone that does more (faster Internet, more memory for faster operations, better camera, etc.) or a smaller, simpler, lightweight, easy-to-handle phone that does the things I need, but slower, and that has an inferior camera. This was the dilemma I faced in the store, and it lingers. You can see where another chunk of my time has gone: ruminating on my choice of a phone, for Pete’s sake!

But never fear. All of this frantic activity will come to a most pleasant end tomorrow, when we travel to Oregon to visit friends. We’ll have dinner with a friend in Portland, then see my sister who lives near Portland for breakfast, and then travel to the coast to meet up with other friends to share good conversations and some quiet time at the ocean. Perhaps this will rejuvenate me enough to tackle another week of reduced workload.

I’ll take some pictures with my fancy new, clunky, high-tech superphone. That should make for a better story next time.