I’m 56, and my friend Chip Conley is 61. Though we both intend to live a long and healthful life, time eventually catches up with all of us, as well as our parents and our other friends and family.
The image above is powerful, and comes from a NY Times Op-Ed by Tim Urban, where he writes:
“Since turning 19 and moving away for good, I’ve averaged about 10 to 15 days a year with them. If I’m one of the lucky ones, I’ll have quality time with my parents until I’m 60. That means that the day I headed off to college, I had something like 350 remaining parent days total — the amount of time I had with them every year of my childhood. What it boils down to is this: My life, in the best-case scenario, will consist of around 20 years of in-person parent time. The first 19 happened over the course of my first 19 years. The final year is spread out over the rest of my life. When I left for college, I had many decades left with living parents, but only about one year of time left to spend with them.”
Powerful stuff, and really makes me think, as I left home for university at 18, then to the Cayman Islands the day after my 24th birthday, then when I moved to the UK five years ago it was to London, not four hundred miles north to where my parents and family live in Scotland, also that my three sons, by 2019, were all back in Cayman for work or study and that is 4500 miles away. Initially, that distance felt ok, as I travelled often to both Scotland and Cayman, but since Covid, the distance has seemed much greater, added to which my plan to spend a month in Cayman in April was ambushed by a pesky colon cancer diagnosis in March (if you are not a regular reader, I have been writing about this and all is well!).
I treasure my sons, my parents, and my family and dear friends. As soon as my chemo is over (late October), I will once again look to expand that green square as much as I can. Heck, though I’ve been very fortunate to have my cancer detected very early and foresee I’ll be around for quite some decades to come yet, it was a wake-up call for me for sure. As my brother said to me the day I was diagnosed, “Carpe F*****g Diem”!
For more on this, read Chip’s post, Counting What Counts, reproduced in full below from the “Wisdom Well” post from Modern Elder Academy. Thanks, Chip x
Counting What Counts.
Chip Conley, May 26, 2022
How many sunsets will you see in the rest of your life? How many weddings will you attend? How many times will you go on a picnic?
You may think the following numbers are too high to consider, but I found this recent New York Times article quite illuminating when we take a number that may seem “countless” and give it a visual reference.
While this math may be a wake-up call toward helping us appreciate each week of our lives, it’s particularly relevant to how we consider our relationship with time. As the Op-Ed writer Tim Urban muses:
“Since turning 19 and moving away for good, I’ve averaged about 10 to 15 days a year with them. If I’m one of the lucky ones, I’ll have quality time with my parents until I’m 60. That means that the day I headed off to college, I had something like 350 remaining parent days total — the amount of time I had with them every year of my childhood. What it boils down to is this: My life, in the best-case scenario, will consist of around 20 years of in-person parent time. The first 19 happened over the course of my first 19 years. The final year is spread out over the rest of my life. When I left for college, I had many decades left with living parents, but only about one year of time left to spend with them.”
This kind of math (depressing as it may at first feel) reminds us that we may be nearing the end of our time spent with the most important people in our lives. And, this is particularly relevant during pandemic times, especially if you’ve lost loved ones. As we approach Memorial Day weekend—what many people consider the start of our more leisurely summer season in the northern hemisphere—maybe it’s time to reach out to some friends or family members who you’ve seen much less frequently in the past couple of years.
Unfortunately, we often downplay the value of something until it’s lost to us. Memorial Day weekend is a time to remember who’s been lost to us which will hopefully inspire us to re-engage with the people who truly matter. You may only have 3 or 4 more family dinners with your parents or 5 or 6 more family vacations with your kids (without their kids). Savor the moments. That’s what makes them momentous.