As my 50th birthday storms toward me, reflection on my historical relationship with time reveals Borderline Personality traits; I had a knack for pushing time away, and crying when I felt it abandoned me. Because I demand a certain amount of control in my relationships, and time is reluctant to be controlled, we often grappled. Time went undefeated. Conversations with other people, both personally and professionally, have taught me this relationship style with time is common. Many people seem to wish time away, then wonder where it has gone. Death denial is an adaptive defense mechanism we use to shield us from morbid preoccupation with mortality, but there comes a point when awareness of death is a necessary prerequisite to living in the moment. This has recently become my first thought of the day, because I’m just jolly that way.
I’m working on my relationship with time now, but as in any couples work, the past rears its ugly head, and gets used as a weapon. Time likes to throw stuff in my face, like when I sacrificed family time for essential self-care activities, or gaming, as it is now referred. Because time failed to recognize the importance of my role as general manager of a digital football franchise, it refused to stop for me, and I learned a lot about expecting too much from a partner.
Even as a child, when I wasn’t wasting time, I was wishing it away so I could quickly get back to the time I wanted to waste. Every now and then my mother reminds me I began reading when I was two-years old. That my book of choice was TV Guide turned out to be an omen of sloth. I figure there is at least 15 years of school days I wished would pass so I could get to my television. That’s a heaping amount of time to hope passed quickly, and now every once in a while, when I feel helpless to console a grieving client, I wish I was taking one of the many pop quizzes the failure of which feels far less consequential.
This pattern replicated when I became a “grown up”, and by grown up I mean reached legal drinking age. I clock watched many a work week away only to spend at least one of those two priceless weekend days incapacitated with hangover.
I finally stopped wishing away the work week when I found myself in a career I love, but it seemed the minute I turned 40, I noticed that cold and wind caused me physical pain, and abbreviated daylight made me sluggish and irritable. At some point I started calling Mother Nature the “B word” as I wished away entire winters. Melancholy has plummeted to new depths when one is compelled to curse out mythological figures. I believed early darkness was death, and rather than embrace the serenity of snow, I gritted my teeth and weathered winter until resurrected by warm, longer days. When I contemplated a blend of my philosophy with northeastern weather patterns, I deemed roughly 100 days a year worth living.
Another one of my creative ways to waste time was allowing my thoughts to run amok. I’ve often stared at the canvas of my life, created masterpieces of mayhem, and mused about all the things that would inevitably go wrong, only to realize when the future arrived, what I feared most rarely came to pass. To date, I’ve received absolutely no return on my investment in dread.
I’ve also spent my fair share of time perseverating on the past. It’s where I visit to wallow in regret, pour over every wrong decision I’ve ever made, and admonish myself for not doing all the things I “should” have done. Every single one of my attempts at backwards time travel to rewrite my past has been an epic failure. Then my conscience calls me selfish for prioritizing revision of a few drunken decisions in my 30s above killing Adolf Hitler. Although I was raised Catholic, my conscience is apparently Jewish.
All these ways of abusing time are underscored by how often I ask myself where the time went, or when other parents and I talk about how fast our kids grew up. It’s nonsense, of course. Time has always moved at the same rate for everyone, and only when it is not given its due attention does it punish us with suggestions of how fast it moves. Now, when I wonder where the time went, I look over my shoulder at the pile of wasted time behind me, and plan how to not waste one second more than the time I just wasted wondering where the time went.
I also disprove my angst-ridden perceptions of time as a bullet train by remembering all those moments when I was certain time stopped. When my kids had overnight stomach bugs, or I gagged my way through a dentist appointment, I was certain time refused to budge with blatant disregard for human suffering.
Sometimes I gain more awareness of something through writing about it, and wondering how many others have had a similar combative relationship with time. I’m not freaking out about turning 50. I just tell myself I’m about a third of the way through my life, and now that I am more self-aware, I can treat time with the respect it deserves. I get the sense that if I go about our relationship in that way, it will show me a greater sense of kindness through stronger returns on wiser investments.
