On Aging
Or, how to use time more wisely
It’s my birthday week.
And while I am grateful to celebrate another year of life, I find myself feeling…a bit nostalgic.
This past year has not been without its challenges, and age—well, aging—seems to have caught up with me a little.
It takes more effort to move the body.
My hearing loss has become more noticeable, especially in large groups.
And I find myself, at the age of 53, standing at something of a crossroads.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I am now a full year older than my dad was when he died.
He never got to see 53.
Had he lived, he would be celebrating his 72nd birthday next month.
And so, as I consider my own age—and wrestle with the quiet realization that I am closer to retirement than I am from it—the words of the Merovingian from The Matrix Reloaded echo in my mind:
“Who has time? Who has time? But then if we never ‘take’ time, how can we have time?”
Who has time, indeed?
⸻
The Illusion of Scarcity
The reality is this: we do have time.
We have more of it than we think.
It surrounds us.
And yet, we often feel as though there is never enough.
Perhaps Seneca was right:
“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it.”
So how much of our time is spent on trivial things?
On distractions?
On efforts that don’t really move the needle of our lives?
Spring, with its quiet insistence on renewal, offers a gentle invitation:
Take stock.
Where is your time being spent?
And more importantly—are you using it well?
⸻
The Shape of a Life Well Lived
Each of us will answer that question differently.
And yet, a life lived well tends to share a familiar shape:
Time with family and friends.
Fewer distractions.
More presence.
A quiet sense of contentment.
I think of the actor Cillian Murphy, who once said:
“I’ve done all the partying. I’ve done enough partying for four or five people as a young fella. But now I like the quiet life.”
And what does that quiet life look like?
As he shared elsewhere:
“I like being at home. My life is very simple. I read a lot of books. I watch a lot of movies. Listen to a lot of music. Walk the dog. Cook with the family. I am boring.”
There’s something deeply reassuring in that.
(And if that’s boring, then perhaps boring has been unfairly maligned.)
⸻
A Gentle Reckoning
So, as you move through your home this week—picking up stray Reese’s Peanut Butter Easter Egg wrappers, discarding the slightly-too-open Peeps, and perhaps assembling one more brisket sandwich—consider time.
Consider aging.
And ask yourself, gently:
Am I living a life well spent?
Not rushed.
Not crowded.
Not merely filled.
But lived.
Because time, in the end, does not ask much of us.
Only that we notice it.
That we honor it.
That we spend it—deliberately, quietly—on what matters.
And if we are fortunate enough to grow older,
perhaps the real work is not in finding more time—
but in learning, at last,
how to be present within it.