The Essence of Time
Some thoughts on turning 40…
My god, I’m 40. Technically, I hit the milestone a few days ago, but felt like I should have something more poignant to write, yet couldn’t find the words. Actually, I still can’t, and I think that’s a good thing. 40 doesn’t feel any different than 39 and 364 days. Or 363 days. And so on… Time is a funny thing. We measure years in circles around a star. It’s scientific, I suppose. But it also feels celestial. Almost astrological. If we were a tiny bit further from the Sun, the trip would be ever so slightly longer. A tiny bit closer, shorter. Point is, it’s rather arbitrary. As least as arbitrary as our literal place in the solar system and Universe can be.
But history makes it matter. So it’s more like a home run record than a mood ring type thing. The shared context and concept makes it matter. It’s something everyone, no matter their background, can relate to. So that’s nice.
The idea that 40 such trips around the star matters also seems a bit random. It is wild that not all that long ago, that number would indicate I’m likely closer to the end. In more recent times, it would seem to indicate that I’m clearly closer to the end than the beginning, therefore I’m officially old. But these days, it feels more like the middle. Maybe even less, fingers crossed.
Anyway, I don’t feel any different than last week. Nor did I expect to, of course. But it is interesting to think that if I had been asleep for, say, 20 years, and just woke up at 40, I clearly would feel different. It’s like the haircut thing. When you see a friend for the first time in a while and they’ve let their hair grow long, they look insanely different. But if you had seen them each day it was growing, you wouldn’t perceive anything. Same with yourself, of course. Because you see yourself each day. My 20 year-old self would look at my 40-year-old self and see that the sides of my beard are nearly completely grey, almost white. That would be wild. Sometimes at night before I go to bed and I’m tired, I’m jarred by this. I don’t hate it, honestly. I may even sort of like it. But it’s weird to see. This is age more so than any number.
The pandemic hasn’t helped any of this, of course. The past 18 months feel more or less pancaked together, creating a two year time compression that we’ll never get back. At the same time, there are always silver linings. And here, the lockdowns have meant that I’ve probably gotten to spend more time with my infant-now-toddler daughter than I would have in a “normal” world with office commutes, business travel, etc. I try to remind myself of this quite often because I think it’s important.
And the one element of turning 40 that I do acutely feel is just that, wanting to be more mindful about my time and how I spend it. This has long been the case for me, of course. But this temporal marker seems a good natural reminder to focus on it even more and to do something about it. Protect your time. Don’t spend it doing things you don’t want to do. Act now. Because time is of the essence — which is perhaps the first time anyone has ever gotten to write that phrase with an actual poignant meaning. So there you go.
