Since I’ve thought so much about time lately, and I seem to have so much of it that I don’t feel too guilty wasting it, I’m going to stick with that subject a while longer.
Time seems to speed up as we get older, doesn’t it? Of course time, clock time that is, can’t speed up. A minute is a minute is a minute. And a day is just, and always, 1,440 of those minutes. But why, I wondered, does it seem like it’s speeding up?
I have a theory. When you’re 2 years old, one year is a full half, 50%, of your existence. But when you’re 10 years old, a year is only 10% of your existence. It follows that as you age, each year is a smaller and smaller percentage of our existence, making it seem as if time is speeding up. So when 68 (and Counting!) comes along, it feels as if some days move as fast as those playground merry-go-rounds from my childhood (long before they started building playgrounds on top of shredded rubber) and Hercules is working hard to spin it faster and faster. It made me dizzy then, and makes me dizzy (or is that ditzy?) now.
I remember well, when I was school age, sitting in a classroom, glancing at the clock every 90 seconds, wondering when the dang hour or day was going to be done. Later, in my working days (some not so very long ago), glancing at the clock on the wall above my desk thinking golly, this afternoon is dragging on forever. Get me out of here!!
Now, with few time commitments, and control over every minute of my life, I brush my teeth at night and wonder where the heck the day went. No clock watching these days. If I’m lucky, I remember what I did in the morning. Even luckier, I feel blessed if I accomplished something productive or worthy of the breath I drew that day.
That’s not to say that I hadn’t had a happy day. Nearly all my days lately are consciously and actively happy. But I still struggle to find a sense of purpose for my continued existence. Human beings, I believe, need a sense of purpose to get up and greet the first day of the rest of their lives with enthusiasm and joy. We are conditioned to make our existence meaningful.
By the time we retire, most of us in my generation are so focused on that purpose being survival related (doing what it takes to support more than enjoy our existence) it’s hard to make the mental and physical switch to fill all the hours of the day with activities of our own choosing. Often we end up spending far more money than we’d expected (or can afford) entertaining ourselves, or find ourselves bored because we simply don’t know what to do with ourselves.
And then there’s that haunting story of the man given the talents in the Bible. There’s a correlation of the talents to our new-found time, I think. Am I going to bury this new-found time, or use it to enrich the world I live in. I, for one, sure don’t want to get caught with THAT guilt rolling around in my being. But as I have thought countless times in my life: I’m a smart woman, I can figure this out. This being, what to do that makes me both happy AND gives me a sense of purpose at the same time AND doesn’t bury my talents.
Writing has always been a skill and not so secret desire of mine. I’ve written, in the past, to impart (whether anyone cared or not) some of the life lessons things I’ve learned. Those who know me well are aware of my life-long project called Thinking 2 Steps Ahead (T2SA). There’s still a lot of life I could squeeze out of T2SA.
For now, I’m learning to clean my house (another story for a future post), catching up on my reading (so many books, so much more time now), nurturing long neglected relationships, writing stream of consciousness musings like this one, soaking up a boatload of Vitamin D, trying to use up my yarn stash, keeping my brain sharp (I hope) with jigaw puzzles, soduko and majhong, and pulling unbelievably prolific weeds out of sand 3 hours a week. No wonder those 1,440 minutes a day seemingly disappear so quickly.
Life is good. So much better than I’d ever imagined it would be when I spent all that time wondering years before what retirement would look like. I’d love to hear what you’re doing these days, retired or not.
P.S. Randy’s in the same boat, and he’s also started a blog he’s been thinking about for a very long time. Honestly, I think his blog may end up being bigger and better than mine ever will be. He’s got such passion for his. He’s a great writer and has great stories to tell about God working in our lives. For now he’s telling our stories, but he named the blog Our High Places because he wants to tell not just his and mine, but anyone’s story who has a story to tell. Visit his blog at www.ourhighplaces.com.
. And please leave a comment. Comments are the rewards writers crave.
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