Time and the perception of time

Lighthouse, Portmahomack, 16 July 2012

I've been thinking a lot about time lately, probably because of the exhausting trip back from the US.  Even after 10 days, I still don't think my internal clock is quite right, but let's hope it's finally getting close.

Time is a strange and ephemeral thing.  It is always with us, but I think we understand it very little.  We can't own it, control it, or hold on to it even momentarily.  With time, perception is everything.  The same 5 minutes can seem fleeting or interminable, depending on the pleasure or pain of the circumstances.  And the more time passes, the more it seems like a funhouse mirror:  elastic, distorted, even mocking.

I am 60.  I don't know how much time I have left, but it is surely less than what I have already experienced.  Sometimes I look back with utter disbelief.  Can it really have been almost 50 years since I was watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan?  Are my babies really 22 and 24?  When did all of this happen?  Was I not paying attention?  I really tried to pay attention, but I was too busy with the things that make time accelerate out of control and yet matter so little.

My amazing mother is 86.  It was such a joy to spend time with her in Tampa and Sanibel recently.  Her memory is phenomenal.  When she is telling a story about her childhood, or about law school, or her travels, it is as if she is there right now - and she brings you with her.  Time seems to pause - or perhaps it is altogether meaningless.  I know I have to savor - and treasure - my time with her.

In the last few weeks, there seem to have been nearly constant reminders of time and my perception of it.  When the border agent in Aberdeen questioned the length of my stay in the UK, pointing out quite sensibly that I will have been here for 8 months in 2012, I was inexplicably stunned.  Somehow, I hadn't thought of it that way.  As he said, "8 months is not visiting.  You're living here."  Oh, right.  I guess I am.  I had thought of living here as something I might be doing eventually, not something I was already doing.  That was a very eye-opening and educational conversation.  Suddenly my perspective shifted and time was somehow different, but nothing had actually changed.

"What it all comes down to is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet" sang Alanis.  I don't expect to figure it all out, or even much of it, but maybe I can be more of an expert on the one topic I ought to know something about:  me.  I know that I'm incredibly lucky to have the options and opportunities that I have at this time in my life, and I know that I truly do appreciate them more than I would have 40, or 20, or even 10 years ago.  That's a nascent start.