A Thousand Months

Another New Year has passed and as usual, I slept through the midnight hoorays. I cannot be bothered to stay awake to check that a clock moved, but there is something about the year-end that makes me think about the nature of time.

AC Grayling, British philosopher and academic, said that ‘we do not know what time is, but we know a great deal about it. We know that it flies, that once lost it cannot be recovered, that we waste it prodigally, that it is mightier than anything in existence. We know how little of it we have, unlike the stars; they exist for billions of years, whereas we humans exist on average for fewer than a thousand months.’ (I would add, if we’re lucky!) ‘We sleep for three hundred of those months, and spend another three hundred, not fully awake to life.’

Not fully awake? I assume A C Grayling (probably Tony to his mates) is talking about watching Reality TV or pushing a trolley around the supermarket. If the research is correct, the average Australian is checking their smart phone over 35 times a day. That takes up time. And there are chores to be done.  We keep our houses tidy and make sure our clothes are washed. There is such a thing as maintenance.

Looking at school reunion pictures also makes me thinks about time.  I was on the Reunion’s Facebook page, but many of the names and faces were unknown to me. Most had left the school long before final exams. My first thought was, wow, they’re getting old! And then I looked in the mirror. I wondered what had happened in their lives. Were they content with all they had achieved? Did they feel fully awake to life? I’ll never know. I didn’t go and so I couldn’t ask.

The reunion was a very long way from my current home, but on one of my trips back through the town, I saw trees wrapped in colorful woolen scarves. I was told this was called Yarn Bombing. It seemed (to me) to be an extraordinarily pointless thing to do with time. (Since when has a tree needed a cardigan?) But it’s all about choices. Perhaps the people who enjoy yarn bombing think that I’m a time waster for always having piles of books I want to read, or worse, lists of books I think I ought to read.

The notion of time as a resource that could be spent wisely or wasted, was introduced to me in my early twenties. I was sent to a Time Management course and after some resistance, became a convert. I became a committed goal writer and a To Do list tragic. Research from one Dr Matthews later told me I was 42% more likely to achieve something if I wrote it down.  So, I write it all down. I probably over-do the list habit, but I would be overwhelmed without it. I know that.  Things would be forgotten, but far worse, connections with people would be lost.

But life rewards action. Planning and dreaming will never be enough. What does the year ahead look like for you, we ask each other. We don’t ask, will you be fully awake to life?

Will we have another year of saying ‘I’ve always wanted to do that’ or ‘I’ve always wanted to go there’ or will we make things happen? Will we make a start?

We’re very lucky if we have choices, and the health to pursue our plans, but as Philip Adams once wrote, ‘most people sit in front of the TV and treat life as if it goes on forever’.

It doesn’t. You’ll be doing well if you get a thousand months.

Happy New Year.