Isn’t funny how your perception of Time changes with age and across the generations.
When we’re young children, Time is defined by events. We become familiar with Bedtime, Mealtime, story Time, and now screen Time. Our Time is measured by activities or events, not hours or minutes. For the young, Time can seem endless when you are actively involved or forever when you are waiting for someone or something.
As young adults, the challenge is to achieve as much as possible within any given slot of Time. Thinking of and preparing for the next event can seem to be an unnecessary waste of Time that could be used for other things. Familiar drills, such as shopping or dinner, are dealt with on the fly and do not need any careful rumination. We would deal as things came along. We would pride ourselves on managing and maximizing Time. Waiting anywhere was a waste of Time. Just-in-Time was the standard objective. Frenetic was fun. You felt alive and in control.
Over the years, as the clock ticked into middle age, a few missed flights, a botched deadline, or a disappointed friend encouraged the addition of a Time cushion into our schedules. It became a habit to carry along something to read or a project to work on that made this cushion of Time more productive. In fact, sometimes that Time cushion could turn into the most productive Time of the week. Frenetic became passé. You felt more assured and in control.
Today, watching some of my older friends, I observe how concerned they are about Time. They seem to obsess about always wanting to be on-Time. They always allow a very generous amount of Time to prepare for or to arrive at any event. Living with fewer demands and far more abundant Time, it seems that people take longer and longer to do fewer and fewer things. Frenetic isn’t even in the lexicon.
It seems curious that older seniors always seem to be thinking of and preparing for the next event rather than enjoying the current moment of the day. For example, the minute lunch is over they are thinking about what we are going to do for dinner. Planning for the next event is always front and center stage.
Watching these different perceptions of Generational Time in play, and the inherent conflicts they can create at family gatherings and outings, I realize that I have an entirely different role to play in this ongoing human comedy called life. It is now my job to point out why there are different perceptions of a simple thing like Time. More often than not, my solution is humor . . . especially laughing at myself. After all, who wants to spent their Time being upset over different perspectives of Time.
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