The other day, I found myself free-falling down a rabbit hole about time. In the “you learn something new every day” category, I learned that a second is defined scientifically as a specific number of radiation cycles of a cesium atom. It is immutable, objective, and relentless.
Except when it isn’t.
When I was a kid, my family used to travel over the Christmas holiday. While most of the time we wound up on a tropical island somewhere (usually Puerto Rico), every now and again we’d go a little farther afield. We visited the Soviet Union (it was still the USSR when we were there in 1980), London and Spain, among other places. I think this probably contributed to my love of travel – my siblings and I generally had a lot of fun on these trips even though we had to put up with our parents as the cost of going somewhere.
We never celebrated Christmas when I was growing up, and I was always envious of the Christmas advent calendar. I would make my own calendar counting down to our holiday vacation departure date, carefully cutting the construction paper to be able to fold back each flap and reveal the number of days I still needed to get through. As with most experiences that reside in long term memory, it seemed like each day of the countdown was an eternity, and that time somehow slowed down during the month of December.
I think it’s fair to say that we rarely experience time with atomic precision, even though every second lasts the same amount of time as every other second. So why did one second in any other month feel so different from one second in December?
I’m no physicist, so I’ll stay away from concepts like time dilation. I’d love to have dinner with Albert Einstein, but I’m afraid we’d wind up talking about the best pizza spot in Princeton or the merits of the stromboli as an alternative, and I’d lose the opportunity to get a better understanding of our universe. What I’d like to know is why a countdown is such an emotional amplifier. Countdowns to something you’re looking forward to tend to “thicken” time – the days feel viscous and sticky, and the waiting seems endless. Countdowns to something negative often seem to pass at breakneck speed. The future casts a shadow of dread backward onto the present; we want the time to pass so the ordeal we’re anticipating will be over, yet we simultaneously want to stop time to avoid the ordeal entirely.
My experience of countdowns has been an amalgam of time sensitivity. Now I’m a snowball rolling downhill accelerating with each passing day.
I’ve gone through three self-inflicted countdowns over the last months. First, once I made the decision to retire, I had to figure out when to give notice to my partners and clients. The anxiety about the “announcement” was all-consuming. The days flew by, leaving me feeling unprepared for the emotional experience of doing something monumental to change my life. However, at the same time, the weeks and months seemed to slow down. I wanted to get on to the serious business of doing nothing, and I felt like I was wading through quicksand.
Once I gave notice, I had a similar experience. Each day seemed interminable, and time thickened over the weeks and months until my retirement date. I installed a countdown clock on my phone and got comfort from knowing that I had “only” 162 more days until my retirement date. I pictured marking days with an “x” on my prison cell wall. Each day felt like a month, yet I simultaneously felt like I was hurtling at light speed towards “the date.”
Finally, after my retirement date, I changed my countdown clock to reflect the number of days before my gap year begins. I figured that would provide some structure to my planning process. Unlike the feeling I had as a kid anticipating our holiday trip, the days before my gap year begins raced by. Cesium atoms have been radiating at a breakneck pace. I can’t believe I’m leaving in less than a week. People always asked me whether I thought I’d get bored in retirement; I don’t feel like I’ve had a second to be bored.
I have struggled with the push/pull of each of my countdowns. The biggest challenge I’ve confronted has been what I’ve decided to call the “carpe diem sacrifice.” I think that sounds kind of pseudo-scientific and it mostly is. I’ve tried really hard to be “present” each day, with varying degrees of success. I regularly hear about “mindfulness,” but daily engagement is work; the alternative is easier (just get through the days) but sadder (forgetting what made one day different from the rest). Everyone I know talks about time passing more quickly as we get older, and I have found that to be true. As these weeks until my trip begins have sped by, I have tried hard to slow down and let time coagulate. I didn’t want to lose this year to the anticipation of next year. I even force myself to watch entire NY Giants football games – talk about time slowing down. I want to carpe every diem.
So, here we are at the end of 2025. I still feel like I have so much to do and so little time to get it done. Maybe I’ll go get some construction paper and make my own advent calendar to mark the remaining days. Better yet, I’ll delete the countdown app on my phone and take things one day at a time.
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