on time

my niece turns ten in a couple of weeks. ten—suddenly double digits, a milestone that feels both monumental and irreversible in a way that nine never did. i still remember the day my brother and sister-in-law brought her home from the hospital, this tiny, impossibly fragile creature, eyes wide with wonder, taking in every detail of this strange new world. now she’s talking to me about tiktoks and taylor swift; and on rare occasions that make my heart ache, she confides a little something about a boy.

there’s a mathematics to aging that no one really teaches you in school. at twelve, a year accounts for one-twelfth of your existence, a significant 8.3% of everything you’ve ever known. but by the time you’re thirty, that same year shrinks to a mere 3.3% of your lived experience.

as we move further and further from the starting line, each passing year becomes a smaller fraction of the whole; decades compress into what feels like months, years dissolve into weeks. but time is never actually speeding up—only our perception of it is, like compound interest, each year moving quicker than the last. the more life we live, the faster it all seems to slip away.

i know part of this is the oddball effect, the phenomenon where novelty expands time perception. new experiences render time thick and viscous, while routine coaxes it into evaporation. as we age and life becomes more predictable, things become less novel; time hastens once more.

so what do i do? i slow down, i pay attention, i breathe. i look for wonder and awe in everyday moments and do whatever else mindfulness apps tell you to do. but still. i blink, and it’s july. this is life’s cruel irony: just as we finally learn to savor a moment, we realize there are fewer left to savor.

time doesn’t care who you are or what you do—it’s unyielding. even the most mindful among us are sure to miss more moments than we catch. maybe that’s just how it works, maybe we’re not meant to hold it all. i mean, there are things i’d gladly fast-forward: root canals and heartbreaks, laborious meetings and listless nights. but golden sunsets and belly-aching laughter, books by a fireside and fresh watermelons in the summer—those, i’d want to bottle up and slow forever.

perhaps, then, it’s not so much about trying to stretch time, but about distilling it. to know what deserves our attention and what does not. to discern when to pause and when to let things pass. to keep the important things weighty, while allowing the trivial to remain light.

i think about what c.s. lewis wrote in the weight of glory: “to be happy at home, said johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. as long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him.”

the beauty of ordinary days, the sacredness of simple existence. maybe that’s it. maybe that’s what we’re racing against time to preserve, why time even matters at all. to protect our dinners, cherish our walks, hold onto our inside jokes. not because these moments are extraordinary, but because they’re ours.

as for the rest—tomorrow’s chaos, the e-mail inbox, the dread of time’s passage—well, tomorrow will worry about itself. each day has enough trouble of its own.