Tick Tock
There are 60 seconds in a minute. There are 60 minutes in a hour. There are 24 hours in a day. There are 7 days in week. 52 weeks in a year.
It’s become pretty popular now to say something along the lines of “We all have the same 24 hours,” to the point where it’s become the go-to mantra of those who’ve lucked into success. And if you’re luckier still, you’re a part of that percentage of the population who manage to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep a night.
Of the many lessons 2020 taught me, the one that stuck out to me the most — indeed, the one that sticks with me even as I write this — is that time is more precious than you could ever imagine.
As a man in my 30s, with a mother who’ll turn 53 later this week and grandparents in their mid-70s, I become more and more aware every day about how the metaphorical clock is ticking. I can tell you that I certainly never imagined still being single and with no prospects for starting a family, so close to 35. Hell, the original plan was to have found my future wife back in undergrad and have been married no later than 30. Things, of course, didn’t go according to plan.
So I find myself in a sort of limbo. On the one hand, at 34, although I still have a desire to get married and start a family, I haven’t yet falling into the idea of “settling” on someone who doesn’t fulfill me just to get there. On the other, I’m constantly faced with the mortality of my loved ones. Both of my grandparents ended up in the hospital in the last two months. When I talk with my moms, she mentions aches and pains and can’t quite walk as well as she used to. She’s still able-bodied and probably in some of the better shape of her life at 53, but I see the signs. I notice the lines under her eyes, some of which no doubt my sisters and I have caused and others more likely the result of time. The grays aren’t yet in her long Black hair, or at least I can’t see them. I am okay with the fact that I’m not getting any younger — but I am also confronted with the fact that THEY aren’t getting any younger, either. I REALLY want my future wife to experience the kind hearts of my grandparents. I have been trying and failing to find something that is not necessarily perfect, but a love that is fulfilling and enduring. And like it or not, I’m on the clock.
I’ve had to reflect on some of the friendships I’ve made along the way. The people I’ve held close to me and the people I’ve pushed away. The people I’ve known for decades, who have almost become strangers… and the people I’ve met in the last few years who it feels like I’ve known for a decade. And even though they were younger, a handful of those friends have passed. There are no words to describe, really, what it’s like to have sat in a section and celebrated with someone back when the year started, and then find out later in the year, that his time was up. How do you go from being the literal life of the party to that life being glaringly absent? And then most recently, I’ve had to ask myself, have I been a good friend? Have I taken the people I call “my people,” for granted? Is there time enough to make up for the time lost? Because I’m on the clock.
Ordinarily, I’d say something here about how I’m going to do better and how I’m going to reach out more. But who knows if I’ll even have the time to do that properly? I’m reminded of a moment from my favorite novel, The Great Gatsby. As the titular character reflects on the possibilities of rekindling a love he once thought had eluded him, his confidante, Nick, tells him that it won’t be exactly how it was because “you can’t repeat the past.” Gatsby replies, “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” Even as we know that clock is ticking away, we tend to cling to the memories. We cling to the possibility that nostalgia might make the future bend back, because history can and DOES repeat itself. But what of the present? “Now” becomes a casualty because you’re focused on making sure you can carry “then” into “later.”
Many days, I wish I could stop time. Freeze it, really. I wish I could back to the moments when I didn’t anticipate every friend to become a potential foe. To the moments when I didn’t have to confront that everybody around me is eventually going to go away because that “eventually” was so much further down the line. To that feeling of knowing no matter what happened — even though it wasn’t for me to guarantee — that I’d see my friends the very next day. To the moments when I thought that girl was the one I’d been searching for. What if I had held her, suspended us in time, so that she’d never eventually come to her senses and end up disappointed in the real me?
But every second I spend wishing, another second passes in real time. Those seconds will become minutes, those minutes, hours. I’ll close my eyes and inhale, and by the time I’ve opened my eyes and exhaled, a month will have passed. The Blackness of my beard will gradually sprout gray here and there. Like or not, I’m on the clock. And it’s sobering, scary even, to accept that time won’t wait for me to catch up.
