Parenthood and Time
I’ve just been reading the musings of imminent fatherhood over at imagethief. The blog’s owner, Will, is an exceptionally gifted and humourous writer. In his post he reflects on the issue of how our perception of time changes with age, arguing that 40 weeks of gestation is insufficient for a decent preparation:
The funny thing is that thirty-nine weeks ago it seemed like plenty. Nine months of pregnancy felt like a school-year did back when I was in second grade: about ten minutes longer than eternity. But one of the curious but well-known side effects of getting older is that time compresses. When I was ten the idea of deferring anything for a year was essentially like postponing it forever, or longer. A year hence was simply too remote and exotic a concept to contemplate…
When you’re forty, and you’re planning investments with a twenty year time horizon and buying insurance products calibrated in decades, a year is a rounding error…
Great stuff. Read the rest here.
It’s very true. New Year seems like yesterday to me, and the beginning of the first semester the week before that. But here we are about to enter the third month of 2008. If it wasn’t a leap year we’d already be there. Frightening!
Even more alarming is the prospect of this perception accelerating with each passing year. I’m reminded of the character Roy Batty’s words to his creator in Blade Runner:
I want more life, fucker.
It’s possible that half of my lifespan is still ahead of me, which seems like a fair deal. That the second half of our lives is perceived as a temporal fraction of the first half is just a cruel joke. And what happens when we try to fill those days with productive output? You’ve got it - they go even faster! I’m definitely with Roy Batty on this one.