So now we come to the crux: time goes faster as you get older, but this is because, as a general rule, by the time we are older, we have settled in on the story lines and narrative arcs by which we structure our lives. We sign on as wife, potter, architect, bar tender, business person, or whatever, and so our lives are governed by time- and event- structures (shifts, projects, pregnancies, etc.) that have nothing to do with biological or physical time. We have become expert wives, potters, architects and now we are the expressions of our own routinized skill.
We are now actualized habits.
Want to live forever? Want to be young again? Don’t waste your time with brain fitness computer programs. These are “scientifically proven” to exercise your brain better than watching educational DVDs does. But you can do better than that! And don’t do crossword puzzles for their neurological benefit. I don’t have clinical evidence to support this, but in so far as a crossword puzzle is a routinized, habitualized form of word play — and in my experience, that’s what it is — I suspect that crossword puzzles are part of the problem not the solution. (Which is not to deny that they can be lots of fun!)
Want to live forever? Break your habits. Do things you don’t know how to do and foreswear the routine. Walk where you would normally drive. Crawl where you would normally walk. Make a friendship with someone in a new language. Put down that cigarette! Or take up that cigarette! Leave your marriage. Give yourself over to something different. Make yourself a beginner.
If you do this, each day will become an eternity. You won’t live forever, but it will seem like forever.
But there is a price: Habit is the safety zone. Marriages are comfortable, safe places, whatever other virtues and flaws they may have. And a habit-free existence — as I wrote last week — isn’t really possible anyway. It would be an existence without expertise, and so a life without language or meaning. It would be a beginner’s life. But the beginner is confined to the little things, to the meaningless exercises and pointless mechanics. The expert, in contrast, sees the big picture; the world opens up before the sweep of the expert’s skills. To give up one’s habits, to break free of the arcs, is to trade in one’s expertise.
You gain time, but you lose sense.
Habits are a curse, but there is no recognizably human form of life without them.
This really rang a bell for me - why I am doing more hands on things these days - next week cutting down my first big tree.
Maybe I should talke up dancing after all - Tango anyone?
