Time and Values Realignment
One of the shifts that often occurs in midlife is a change in how time is experienced. Not simply that there is less of it, though the weight of that truth gradually becomes harder to ignore, but that time itself seems to move differently. Many people report that it passes more quickly than they would wish, a perception for which there is some psychological explanation. More significantly, however, the limits of life become more present. Mortality moves from abstraction to background fact. As it does, the value of the time that remains comes more sharply into view. When the future no longer stretches out as an open expanse into which everything might one day be fitted, deferral becomes more costly. The assumption that what matters can always be postponed begins to falter. Finitude does not simply create urgency; it forces discernment. We cannot afford to attend to everything. We are pressed, instead, to attend to what matters.
This recognition has come into particularly sharp focus for me following the premature deaths of two close friends. Bereavement has a way of stripping away abstraction. It confronts us, not dramatically but insistently, with the fact that the time we imagine ourselves to have is not guaranteed. The question of how one ought to spend the time that remains ceases to be theoretical. It becomes immediate and ethical.
This insight that life really is quite short is encapsulated in Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks. The somewhat prosaic point of the title is that, should we be fortunate to live until 80 years old, we have only a mind-bogglingly short life span – the 4000 weeks of the title. The provocation is not merely that life is short, but that it is radically insufficient. Even a long life allows only a limited number of serious commitments, sustained relationships, and meaningful undertakings. We cannot do everything. We cannot be everything. Pretending otherwise comes at a cost. The task is not greater efficiency, but clearer priority.
What is striking is how rarely we permit the reality of life’s brevity to shape our attitude towards our professional life. Most organisational cultures are built on the fiction of perpetuity, the pressures towards efficiency in that context, and the inevitability of success if only we can gain mastery over our diaries. Mortality is expended in the context of work with profligacy. The oft-spoken of work-life balance is always tilted towards the latter by default, for all sorts of genuine, if fragile, reasons.
When finitude is realised, or perhaps is thrust upon us by fate, the sense of the approaching ending can force us to examine our identity and our values within this. This is not a failure on our part, it is a grace given to us; a chance to acknowledge the realities of our human existence and seek to live differently, live better even, as a result.
If you would like to explore these questions, of time, loss, and value, in a patient and reflective conversation, you are welcome to be in touch.