Time - Friend or Foe?

Over the last few years I have started to get a bit worried about stopping work and retiring. Now do not get me wrong, it is not that I am a power junky, or my work gives me an identity which I will lose once I stop working. It is also not because I would not know how to fill up my day and enjoy the remaining years. As anyone who knows me will testify, I have interests outside of work that can keep me going for several lifetimes. But let me explain what I mean.

Time is flexible and relative, and don't I know it. Somehow, in my experience, the busiest people are the ones who sit at home. They seem to have no time for anything, be it reading, or answering emails or replying to SMS's. It seems to me almost as if the laziest people are the ones who work all day, and still have time when they finish, to pursue other hobbies, sports or interests. I have a theory that - the harder someone works, the less busy they get! Seems counter intuitive but it is true if people's behaviors are any gauge. All the working people I know seem to find the time to do everything that is required to keep life ticking along, for themselves as well as for others.

On the other hand, 'some' non-working or retired people, cannot seem to find the time in their busy schedules for anything other than their daily routine. They have neither the time to learn new skills nor to develop different talents. As time passes the distance between them and the world outside becomes insurmountable. My father would be a case in point. I never heard my father ever say that he was too busy for anything, till the day he retired. For the last twenty odd years since that event, he has been at breakneck speed - doing what though, I do not know. His day is full and he is now too busy to read books, or listen to music (which he claims he loves). Between waiting for the cleaning lady to come in the morning and his trips to the Bank and Bazaar, there is no time for anything else. Time has suddenly become such a precious commodity that the only thing that competes with its absence is money. My sister is another shining example. She is at home all day. Of course she gives tuitions for a few hours every day, but her time is equally occupied and is a uber-luxury that she just does not have.

My personal experience during my hiatus a couple of years ago was a first-hand peek into the relativity of time. Coming out of an extremely hectic and stressful assignment (to say the least) I was used to living my days hard and fast. The first few weeks at home, the pace continued. I was calling and corresponding and arranging meetings, on top of living my life the way I was used to. As the weeks passed however, I started to feel like time was becoming gooier, almost sticky, as each activity seemed to eat up a bit more time than it did the previous day. I felt almost like the hours in my days were somehow reducing. Instead of having twenty four hours in a day somehow fate had decided that I would have to make do with only fifteen. It started from the time I got up to the time I went to sleep again – every task be it making a cup of tea, to taking a shower, to having lunch, seemed to gobble up more of my time.

The PC took more time to crank up, the building elevators got slower, the kettle took more time to boil – and before I knew it the morning or the day was gone. Don’t get me wrong – I was still going through my life at the same pace, feeling as rushed and breathless every moment of the day, it was just that everything else seemed to have slowed down or could not keep pace with me. By the end of the three months, I would have to schedule and diarize a trip to the supermarket, as my day just could not fit it in. There just was no time to maneuver or juggle errands. And because of that everything started to become a chore – answering phone calls, responding to emails, running to the grocery, all became Herculean tasks requiring huge sacrifice on my part.

During that period if I was required to go to the school for a PTA meeting, for example, or some other errand; it became a huge issue for me. And to top my troubles off, my family refused to understand how hard pressed I was for time. They would give me grief, on how I was constantly complaining about being busy and the lack of time, despite the fact that I was at home all day. They would repeatedly point out how I was not helping out at all. My wife, for example, just refused to understand that the PTA meeting was clashing with my afternoon nap, and that if I did not take that nap, I would lose all my mental strength for the day, which of course I needed to better enjoy the dinner I had planned with friends that evening. (She of course completely lost it, when I suggested to her that it would be better for her to go to the PTA, as she was at work and already out of the house.) My life and days became a sequence of such hard choices, where in gain on one hand came only at my loss.

At the end of that sojourn, when I was actually offered a permanent post with my current employers, I was worried that I might not have the time to do justice to the job and also keep healthy. With (seemingly) fifteen hours in the day, of which a minimum nine would be required at work, that did not leave me with much for family, enjoyment and sleep. Thankfully fate or destiny whatever you call it somehow redressed my daily balance of hours as soon as I started my new assignment. Time started to keep pace with me again, and instead of working against me became a friend. In fact we managed to patch up the relationship so well that soon I felt as if I had thirty hours in a day, to fit in and enjoy whatever I wanted to.

So now I hope you understand my concern with my prospects post retirement. I have only a more hectic schedule, full of things to do (but very little achieved) to look forward to, once I decide to put my feet up. Time, I think is a fickle friend and I know will turn its back on me in a flash. Thankfully I still have a few years, to try and forge a strong relationship with it, so that it does not abandon me when I need it most.

Time is a great teacher; unfortunately it kills all its pupils - Hector Louis Berlioz