Time's Hold

Seeing this commercial again got me thinking about the passage of time and the process of aging, and just how different they are, or should be. In this digital, “constantly-on” and ever connected world, I really like the metaphor of a large hourglass to illustrate aging. In the beginning, the granules of sand trickle through the neck without even measuring a perceptible change in the store of sand in the upper bulb. Even when they begin to land in the empty bulb on the bottom, the granules bounce and scatter, with no real evidence of accumulation. Eventually we see the effect of the vortex in the center of the pile as the center of the upper layer starts to show some concavity and then finally the sand begins to gather in a small mound in the lower bulb, no longer bouncing hither and yon. And then there is that middle time, when the sand moves from the widest part of the upper bulb to the widest part of the lower bulb and it feels like it’s almost stopped, like it could go on forever at this rate without exhausting the store of sand. Then as it winds down, sand now remaining only in the narrower portion of the upper bulb and falling into the narrower portion of the lower bulb, it seems to pick up speed. If you watch this quietly you will notice that your heart rate quickens as you watch in expectation for the last granules of sand to slip through the neck.

Yet we know that in a well-built hourglass the sand falls through the neck at a constant flow at all stages, just like the passage of astrological time. How then, like the hourglass, does it seem the days pass quickly and the years slowly at the beginning, yet as the years accumulate, the days stretch out and the years fly by?

I’ve had the opportunity to share some time with people recently who are at a transitional period in their lives, contemplating what lies ahead and realizing that in most cases it is so different than what they had imagined, even just a few short years earlier. It is as Robert Frost said: “the evening knows what the afternoon never suspected”. We discussed how they “spent” their time; what was really important to them by the evidence of their actions; what brought them joy and how, or if, they pursued it; what they talked about with enthusiasm; what they reveled in. I observed how much their answers told of their individual stories.

I was asked to answer one of “those” questions recently: “if you knew you were going to die by such and such age, how would you live your life differently”? I thought about this a fair amount, a tendency of mine. What I came to realize is that the stage of death matters not if you continue to stay alive but cease to keep learning, keep creating, keep discovering, keep reinventing, keep devoting yourself to something, and keep engaging the people you love. What I concluded from all this is that for all of us, today is but the youthful stage for all the tomorrow’s tomorrows we have left. It’s time to turn the hourglass over.