the normal way we set about trying to
extend our lives is by striving to add
more years to them usually by eating
more couscous and broccoli going to bed
early and running in the rain but this
approach may turn out to be quixotic not
only because death can’t reliably be
warded off with kale but at a deeper
level because the best way to lengthen a
life is not by attempting to stick more
years on to its tail one of the most
basic facts about time is that even
though we insist on measuring it as if
it were an objective unit it doesn’t in
all conditions feel as if it were moving
at the same pace five minutes can feel
like an hour ten hours can feel like
five minutes a decade may pass like two
years two years may acquire the weight
of half a century and so in other words
our subjective experience of time bears
precious little relation to the way we
like to measure it on a clock time moves
more or less slowly according to the
vagaries of the human mind it may fly or
it may drag it may evaporate into Airy
nothing or achieve enduring density if
the goal is to have a longer life
whatever the dietitians may urge it
seems like the priority should not be to
add raw increments of time but to ensure
that whatever years remain feel
appropriately substantial the aim should
be to densify time rather than to try to
extract one or two more years from the
fickle grip of death why then does time
have such different speeds moving at
certain points but will drink fast and
at others with intricate moderation the
clue is to be found in childhood the
first ten years almost invariably feel
longer than any other decade we have on
earth the teens are a little faster but
still crawl yet by our 40s a time would
have started to trot and by our 60s it
will be unfolding at a wildering gala
the difference in pace is not mysterious
it all has to do with novelty the more
our days are filled with new
unpredictable and challenging
experiences the longer they will feel
and conversely the more one day is
exactly like another the faster it will
pass by in an evanescent blur childhood
ends up feeling so long because it is
the cauldron of novelty because it’s
most ordinary days are packed with
extraordinary discoveries and sensations
these can be as apparently minor yet as
significant as the first time we explore
the zip on a cardigan or hold our nose
underwater the first time we look at the
Sun through the cotton of a beach towel
or dig our fingers into the putty
holding a window in its frame dense as
it is with stimuli the first decade
might as well be a thousand years long
by middle-age things can be counted upon
to have grown a lot more familiar we may
have flown around the world a few times
we no longer get excited by the idea of
eating a pineapple owning a car or
flipping a light switch we know about
relationships earning money and telling
others what to do
as a result time runs away from us
without mercy one solution often
suggested at this point is that we
should put all our efforts into
discovering fresh sources of novelty we
can’t just continue to live our small
predictable and therefore Swift lives in
a single narrow domain we need to become
explorers and adventurers we must go to
match you pitch you or Angkor Wat Astana
or Montevideo we need to find a way to
swim with dolphins or order a 13 course
meal that a world-famous restaurant in
downtown lima that will finally slow
down the cruel gallop of time but this
is to labor under an unfair expensive
and ultimately impractical notion of
novelty we may by middle-age certainly
have seen a great many things in our
neighborhoods but we are fortunately for
us unlikely to have properly noticed
most of them we have probably taken a
few cursory glances at the miracles of
existence that light a hand
and assumed quite unjustly that we know
all there is to know about them we’ve
imagined we understand the city we live
in the people we interact with and more
or less the point of it all but of
course we have barely scratched the
surface
we have grown bored of a world we
haven’t begun to study properly and that
among other things is why time is racing
by the pioneers at making life feel
longer in the way that really counts are
not dieticians but artists at its best
art is a tool that reminds us of how
little we have fathomed and noticed it
reintroduces us to ordinary things and
reopens our eyes to a latent beauty and
interest in precisely those areas we had
ceased to bother with it helps us to
recover some the manic sensitivity we
had as newborns here is Susanne looking
closely at apples as if he had never
seen one before and nudging us to do
likewise here is Van Gogh mesmerised buy
some oranges here is Albrecht Durer
looking as only children usually do very
closely at a clod of Earth we don’t need
to make art in order to learn the most
valuable lesson of artists which is
about noticing properly living with our
eyes open and thereby along the way
savoring time without any intention to
create something that could be put in a
gallery we could as part of a goal of
living more deliberately take a walk in
an unfamiliar part of town ask an old
friend about a side of their life we’d
never dared to probe at lie on our back
in the garden and look up at the stars
or hold our partner in a way we never
tried before it takes a rabid lack of
imagination to think we have to go to
Machu Picchu to find something new in
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel the idiot a
prisoner has suddenly been condemned to
death and be told he has only a few
minutes left to live what if I were not
to die he exclaims what if life were
given back to me or what infinity
I turn a whole minute into an age faced
with losing his life dostoevsky’s poor
wretch recognizes that every minute
could be turned into ian’s of time with
sufficient imagination and appreciation
it is sensible enough to try to live
longer lives but we are working with a
false notion of what long really means
we might live to be a thousand years old
and still complain that it had all
rushed by too fast we should be aiming
to lead lives that feel long because we
have managed to imbue them with the
right sort of open-hearted appreciation
and unstow be receptive ‘ti the kind
that five-year-olds know naturally how
to bring to bear we need to pause and
look at one another’s faces study the
evening sky wander at the eddies and
colors of the river and dare to ask the
kind of questions that open our souls we
don’t need to add years we need to
densify the time we have left by
ensuring that every day is lived
consciously and we can do this via a
maneuver as simple as it is momentous by
starting to notice all that we have as
our wisdom display cards explore what it
really means to be wise and how we can
strive to become more enlightened in our everyday lives
extend our lives is by striving to add
more years to them usually by eating
more couscous and broccoli going to bed
early and running in the rain but this
approach may turn out to be quixotic not
only because death can’t reliably be
warded off with kale but at a deeper
level because the best way to lengthen a
life is not by attempting to stick more
years on to its tail one of the most
basic facts about time is that even
though we insist on measuring it as if
it were an objective unit it doesn’t in
all conditions feel as if it were moving
at the same pace five minutes can feel
like an hour ten hours can feel like
five minutes a decade may pass like two
years two years may acquire the weight
of half a century and so in other words
our subjective experience of time bears
precious little relation to the way we
like to measure it on a clock time moves
more or less slowly according to the
vagaries of the human mind it may fly or
it may drag it may evaporate into Airy
nothing or achieve enduring density if
the goal is to have a longer life
whatever the dietitians may urge it
seems like the priority should not be to
add raw increments of time but to ensure
that whatever years remain feel
appropriately substantial the aim should
be to densify time rather than to try to
extract one or two more years from the
fickle grip of death why then does time
have such different speeds moving at
certain points but will drink fast and
at others with intricate moderation the
clue is to be found in childhood the
first ten years almost invariably feel
longer than any other decade we have on
earth the teens are a little faster but
still crawl yet by our 40s a time would
have started to trot and by our 60s it
will be unfolding at a wildering gala
the difference in pace is not mysterious
it all has to do with novelty the more
our days are filled with new
unpredictable and challenging
experiences the longer they will feel
and conversely the more one day is
exactly like another the faster it will
pass by in an evanescent blur childhood
ends up feeling so long because it is
the cauldron of novelty because it’s
most ordinary days are packed with
extraordinary discoveries and sensations
these can be as apparently minor yet as
significant as the first time we explore
the zip on a cardigan or hold our nose
underwater the first time we look at the
Sun through the cotton of a beach towel
or dig our fingers into the putty
holding a window in its frame dense as
it is with stimuli the first decade
might as well be a thousand years long
by middle-age things can be counted upon
to have grown a lot more familiar we may
have flown around the world a few times
we no longer get excited by the idea of
eating a pineapple owning a car or
flipping a light switch we know about
relationships earning money and telling
others what to do
as a result time runs away from us
without mercy one solution often
suggested at this point is that we
should put all our efforts into
discovering fresh sources of novelty we
can’t just continue to live our small
predictable and therefore Swift lives in
a single narrow domain we need to become
explorers and adventurers we must go to
match you pitch you or Angkor Wat Astana
or Montevideo we need to find a way to
swim with dolphins or order a 13 course
meal that a world-famous restaurant in
downtown lima that will finally slow
down the cruel gallop of time but this
is to labor under an unfair expensive
and ultimately impractical notion of
novelty we may by middle-age certainly
have seen a great many things in our
neighborhoods but we are fortunately for
us unlikely to have properly noticed
most of them we have probably taken a
few cursory glances at the miracles of
existence that light a hand
and assumed quite unjustly that we know
all there is to know about them we’ve
imagined we understand the city we live
in the people we interact with and more
or less the point of it all but of
course we have barely scratched the
surface
we have grown bored of a world we
haven’t begun to study properly and that
among other things is why time is racing
by the pioneers at making life feel
longer in the way that really counts are
not dieticians but artists at its best
art is a tool that reminds us of how
little we have fathomed and noticed it
reintroduces us to ordinary things and
reopens our eyes to a latent beauty and
interest in precisely those areas we had
ceased to bother with it helps us to
recover some the manic sensitivity we
had as newborns here is Susanne looking
closely at apples as if he had never
seen one before and nudging us to do
likewise here is Van Gogh mesmerised buy
some oranges here is Albrecht Durer
looking as only children usually do very
closely at a clod of Earth we don’t need
to make art in order to learn the most
valuable lesson of artists which is
about noticing properly living with our
eyes open and thereby along the way
savoring time without any intention to
create something that could be put in a
gallery we could as part of a goal of
living more deliberately take a walk in
an unfamiliar part of town ask an old
friend about a side of their life we’d
never dared to probe at lie on our back
in the garden and look up at the stars
or hold our partner in a way we never
tried before it takes a rabid lack of
imagination to think we have to go to
Machu Picchu to find something new in
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel the idiot a
prisoner has suddenly been condemned to
death and be told he has only a few
minutes left to live what if I were not
to die he exclaims what if life were
given back to me or what infinity
I turn a whole minute into an age faced
with losing his life dostoevsky’s poor
wretch recognizes that every minute
could be turned into ian’s of time with
sufficient imagination and appreciation
it is sensible enough to try to live
longer lives but we are working with a
false notion of what long really means
we might live to be a thousand years old
and still complain that it had all
rushed by too fast we should be aiming
to lead lives that feel long because we
have managed to imbue them with the
right sort of open-hearted appreciation
and unstow be receptive ‘ti the kind
that five-year-olds know naturally how
to bring to bear we need to pause and
look at one another’s faces study the
evening sky wander at the eddies and
colors of the river and dare to ask the
kind of questions that open our souls we
don’t need to add years we need to
densify the time we have left by
ensuring that every day is lived
consciously and we can do this via a
maneuver as simple as it is momentous by
starting to notice all that we have as
our wisdom display cards explore what it
really means to be wise and how we can
strive to become more enlightened in our everyday lives
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