TIME
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| Point Bonita by Moonlight. Photograph by Harold Davis. |
I was talking earlier today about my favorite end-of-the-world fantasy which is actually not so much a fantasy as a day-dreamy thought experiment. Here it is: If modern civilization was about to end and you were in a supermarket that had been recently abandoned, what would you take?
This is a very specific scenario, reminiscent of that great scene in the Station Eleven TV adaptation: the power is still on, you have a nearly empty supermarket, you can fill your bags and then hoof it to safety before everything falls apart. In my scenario, you can take whatever you can carry. (I’m not a fan of how Station Eleven’s Jeevan pushes, like, six full shopping carts from what looks like it should be a Lakeview Jewel all the way to the Lake Point Tower, but whatever.)
I can only guess about what is so appealing about this question but for some reason I find it calming. I’m not thinking about the adjacent tragedies and traumas of this scenario, I’m just walking around the grocery store of my mind and making a little list. Firstly, you would want foods that were nutrient-dense and non-perishable; I'm thinking lots of nuts, seeds, and jerky. Then, maybe, I would see how many tins of sardines I could carry, maybe some tuna as long as they are packaged with a pull tab. I would grab some multivitamins because it might be hard to get a vegetable for a minute. Also, I would get some tea tree oil because I feel like you could do a lot of body care with just a little bit of that stuff. What else? Some high quality dark chocolate might be a good tool at staving off insanity and despair in the next few weeks (I guess I’m thinking a little bit about trauma). What else? I wonder if I would be able to soak or cook dry beans, or grains. All of them are fairly heavy but a little can go a long way if I have a way to prepare them. Et cetera, et cetera.
This is likely not the best apocalypse grocery list (I mean, it’s not the worst either) but my point here is that maybe I like this idea because my ultimate fantasy is one of time slowing down.
A breakdown of modern life is the easy way to imagine this happening. We all experienced a dry run of this during the pandemic: no more commutes, priorities shifted, all the appointments we had were suddenly canceled, everything that filled our external lives was quickly possible through a computer screen or, we came to realize, actually didn’t need to happen at all.
I remember going to the grocery store with my N95 early on a Sunday morning and thinking through exactly what I needed to get me to next Sunday. I strangely enjoyed those supermarket trips, the aisles rigidly governed by those one-way walking signs, everyone keeping a nice brisk pace through the aisles to keep their distance. There was a pleasure in that cycle and that clarity of thought. Many people hated it, but it worked for me.
Of course, there was a truly unfathomable amount of misery and hardship felt during the pandemic—the effects of which we’re still feeling and coping with today. However, my personal experience of the pandemic was one of quiet joy. It was the fantasy coming true. There were quite literally more hours in the day to fill. I started running and exercising at home. I started eating better and sleeping as much as my body required for the first time since probably childhood. I took long walks outdoors just to experience movement and wide-open space and sunlight.
A lot of people left the pandemic with a list of things that they decided they would not give up again. For some it was time spent with children. For others it was healthy habits. For others it was emotional intangibles like gratitude or certain spiritual practices. For me, I think I left the pandemic ready to change about my often adversarial relationship with time. I no longer believed in a “normal” orientation towards time that everyone experienced and I just had to push myself towards. I no longer cared how anyone else experienced the impossible pace of modern life. I just cared about how I was going to live the life I wanted to live and shake this feeling like time was a wispy vapor that flowed impossibly through my fingertips, that all I could do was dream about it stopping. I wanted time to be a bountiful pile of clay: inert, endlessly alterable, totally under my control. Or, at least a little like that.
Part of that is getting real about the cost/benefit analysis of how I used my time. Exercising takes time; but if done in the perfectly-planned way it can create a wonderful momentum that really reframes the day. Writing for myself takes time; but finding a forum where I can take short and fairly inconsequential pieces of writing (yes, I’m talking about this) to some level of rewarding completion will propel me to take longer pieces of writing towards completion. Food prep takes time; but it creates this amazingly frictionless week that invites needed freedom into otherwise busy days.
And then there was a special class of self-improvement activities that I always wanted to do and always nagged myself for not doing. Nowadays, if I ask myself if those things are worth doing I can pretty easily answer “no, they are not.” Maybe this is just another hidden joy of my early middle age: giving up on the half-realized personal goals that belong to someone else’s life. I’m never going to learn how to bake really well. I’m never going to really get into sewing or woodworking or pottery. I’m not going to take an online class about how to code or how to speak Spanish or how to play the piano. All those things take too much time. If I had a proclivity for any of them I would have found myself drawn to them earlier. But I have not been drawn to any of them. I’m only drawn to the idea of having already done them, having acquired the skill, and enjoying thinking about myself as the person who has acquired that skill.
At my age, fuck that.
The only process that I’m drawn to, repeatedly and relentlessly despite its painful indignities, is writing. I enjoy writing even when I’m really bad at it (this blog proves that) and that is the real test of time well spent. And now, when something else comes up, ask myself if that thing serves the writing. If it does in some way—often in a loopy and tangential way, such as my previous entry—then that activity is approved. If it doesn’t, I don’t have to waste my time. I’m free of it.
In a way, this is like the grocery story thought experiment. You might think you want a bunch of healthy food: apples and baby kale and kombucha. But that stuff will only last a day and will be way too heavy. Don’t waste your time, don’t waste your energy. Get the sardines. The sardines will serve you.
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There is a popular model of how time is perceived throughout life that goes something like this: when you are young, time does not exist; you will live forever and life seems an eternity; as you age, time appears around you like a atmosphere, and then it constricts and constricts until it squeezes the life out of you; your last years are spent gasping for air, making every second count.
If you ask me, this is wrong.
I felt the pressure of time much more strongly in my young-adult days when each year carried dramatic changes. I was always trying to evaluate the success value of my life at 18, then 20, then 23, then 25. Am I doing what I should be doing? Am I doing okay? Am I where a person my age should be?
I’ve actually forgotten about that way of thinking; that life was once a race. Today, I guess I view time as a currency. Something I have that I can use wisely or not (and where sometimes it’s wise to use it unwisely). Learning what is wise (and what is unwisely wise) has taken my four decades to reveal (cause, yeah, that’s how wisdom works. I get it). Time spent with people you are comfortable with is wise. Time spent at home is wise. Time spent in nature is wise. Investing in a career is mostly wise. Time spent reading alone and time spent watching movies with others is wise. Time spent taking naps and doing crossword puzzles and making perfect mixtapes is unwisely wise.
Et cetera, et cetera.
However, the whole trick of a relationship is that it changes over time, it evolves, expands, contracts, simplifies, and then complicates.
So, this is how I relate to time today; this is what passes for wisdom right now. Hopefully, I look back in ten years and I find my current-self very unwise, spending his time writing diary entries about his big ideas that aren’t that big, going on and on about how great life is, not having a goddamn clue.
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References:
Davis, Harold. Point Bonita By Moonlight. Composition & Photography. Rocky Nook, 2022.
“Wheel Of Fire.” Station Eleven, created by Patrick Somerville, season 1, episode 1, HBO Max, 16 December 2021.
Media:
Consider accompanying your reading with this selection from Cassandra Jenkins' lovely 2021 album An Overview on Phenomenal Nature: