Watch trap
In retrospect, my decision earlier this year to wear a watch again seems fitting, given my growing preoccupation with time.
I’m not the first person to wrestle with this intangible yet unavoidable aspect of life, especially in middle age.
But, much like the watch strap against my wrist, the unexpected richness of this year has left its mark.
The ancient Greeks had two ways of thinking about time. Chronos was time as measured: years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds. Kairos was a significant or opportune moment: the point when something could happen or an event acquired a particular importance.
One concerned the measurement of time, the other the significance of a moment within it.
A number of Wednesday evenings this year have seen me participate in a pub quiz after work. Last week there was a question about Princess Diana’s funeral.
Where were you when you heard that she had died?
I had recently turned 17. It was a Sunday morning, and I was cleaning out a cat pen at my parents’ kennels. My dad stepped out of the office to announce to everyone – in a blunt manner that suggested it was inevitable – “Diana’s dead”.
I remember watching the funeral the following weekend, slightly hungover after a house party at Aimee’s, sitting with friends and commenting on Elton John holding back his tears as he played Candle in the Wind.
This was a seminal moment in modern history, and it is one I lived through. Yet a few people on my team had barely started primary school when it happened. A shared history, but not a shared memory.
Like the jolting reminder that your peers may have a different (or no) experience of a contemporary historical event, nobody can prepare you for growing older.
The familiar feeling of time progressing faster never gets easier either, with its speed aided by the regular rhythm of the 9-to-5 and decreasing opportunities for novelty.
This year I have run towards new experiences. In doing so, I’ve endured sleepless nights, endless waits and gruelling slogs; weeks of hopeful anticipation, days of painful anxiety, hours of physical exhaustion.
Now those experiences have passed, I find them difficult to contend with. Moments once hard to reach are now but fleeting memories.
Given my tendency to reflect — and habit of attaching important moments to the places where they happened — remembering the last 10 months can feel like running my fingers over pages of Braille. A scary tumble down a snow-covered Italian hillside… a surprising answer in a rain-sodden Porto… an 18km bike race across sunny Sussex countryside… a disappointing conversation in a dark London cocktail bar… an unexpected invitation while sitting in my back garden… a predictable England second-half collapse in a World Cup semi-final… an 8-hour hike over the undulating Surrey Hills…
Looking back, I can cherish these moments and be grateful for them and what followed. Remembering how little I knew beforehand reminds me that life is full of surprises, and that the quieter moments between them have value too.
Looking ahead, I can feel intrigue and excitement about what is to come. But it’s too easy to fast-forward to the period afterwards, when these experiences will have become memories too.
What about living in the present?
At last Wednesday’s pub quiz, my watch strap was irritating my wrist. I took off my watch, put it in my pocket, and left it there for the rest of the evening.