Passing milestones, like a year or a birthday, often lead one to reflect on life or the passage of time. As I look back at my life, the metaphor that comes to mind is that of water.
As a young person, imagining my life was like standing on a beach looking out at the sea. Knowing that there was another side had no impact. The sea of time seemed impossibly vast, the possibilities and possible choices endless. As the decades ticked by, choices made and not made charted a path that continually shrank the sea of time.
In the beginning, the sea of time could be storm tossed and confused, but gradually it became more like a river. Occasional rapids to be sure, but generally a more placid course. Eventually, however, that river shrank and it ends as a puddle of time whose opposite side is no longer hidden. Faint in the distance perhaps and often shrouded by fog, but in this eighth decade of my life it becomes more real.
The thing that prompted these thoughts for me was the number of comments made by people in the various patient groups we support. We experience time in various ways, but two distinct types as we get older are that it goes so fast, or it seems endless. Both of those extremes are often a source of stress and dismay. Having experienced both, I do have a couple of observations.
When we are young, time goes slow. Summer is a long season, Christmas is sooo far away. Toward the end of our life, the years fly by so very quickly. If we are ill or in pain, time can pass unbearably slowly. These subjective differences are related to memory. When we are young, everything is new. We engage so much new information that we connect bits of time to, that our measure of time is stuffed full of points of connection. When we are older and live in a world of routine, there are many fewer points for our memories to connect to and our feeling about time is that it passes very quickly. When we are in pain, our focus fills time with distress and time can seem endless.
So how might we manage that if our sense of time isn't to our liking? If your sense of time is that it is passing too quickly, the key is new experiences. Engaging with the world in a robust way will alter the perception of the flow of time. Seeking novelty and new things changes the perceived passage of time, so be less routine.
The challenge of pain is the most difficult perception to manage. I got a good dose of that one last year when I got hit with a cancer diagnosis and broke my back. When I was in rehab, in what I thought was a lot of pain, time was endless. Pain and boredom made the time interminable. In reality, it was only a few weeks, but it felt endless at times. Until I was able to be more active, reading was my outlet, but another patient I met took up knitting. Something to occupy the mind or the hands will help.
I'm in my 80's but I'm busier than I like with the affairs of the foundation and my hobby is theoretical physics, trying to understand all that is about our physical world. At an age when many seek less, I try to refill my puddle of time and, on the whole, I'm OK with how things are going. For those of you stressed by time consider new memories as your tools.
For those who haven't seen it yet, the 2024 edition of our Care Survey is ready. It gives a view of how patients experience liver disease over time, and how contact with medical care evolves. We are beginning to see changes in patient care that are encouraging as the education efforts of patients and physicians begin to show results. I invite you to click on the image below and take a look at the report.
Many people don't know what services are available to them in their local area. Finding those local resources in their local zip code is often a challenge. We are developing a tool to help with that. Just click on the link below: enter your local zip-code in the form: to explore the services available to you in your area.
The Wellness League Local Search Tool
We wish you all a healthy and happy holiday season.
