Time Passing
The sound of a ticking clock makes me think of childhood, and, at the same time, boredom. Maybe it was the grandfather clock at an old Aunt’s house on a family day which would seem both interminable and a complete waste of time while the rest of the gang were playing football or cricket down the Rec. Such days drag when you’re young.
Other things were equally disproportionate, like how far away Saturday was on a Monday morning, or how far away four o’clock was at half past nine. At some point in life, the whole thing turns on its head and the years start to race by. When exactly is that? Is it when you have children and, in watching them grow up, you forget that your own years are passing at the same pace? Or is it just the same for those without children? Michaela tells me it is.
Pink Floyd probably summed it up perfectly in the lyrics of the track “Time” from the monumentally famous Dark Side Of The Moon LP. Here’s an extract…
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
I am sure that Michaela and I aren’t alone when we say that even though the years race by and the bodies don’t behave in quite the same way that they used to, there’s something in our core which hasn’t changed one bit. Inside my mind I am still the same teenage boy that I always was, wanting to know the latest football results, not wanting to be indoors and unable to sit still for too long. Inside Michaela’s mind, she is still the same young girl, wanting to do something meaningful every single day and to get out there, see the world and experience different cultures. I, for one, certainly think the same way I did when I was 20.
Life does start to fly by though. Like most people who start their own business, I had a number of misfires before commencing the one which became a success – one which I started at age 38 and ran for almost 25 years before I retired. I had enormous fun and the business gave me huge enjoyment and satisfaction, but now, looking back, it seems incredible that this particular joyride started at 38 and ended at 62. A lifetime raced by while I was out there seeking the next contract.
The slow walk of younger years soon becomes the express train of middle age. Arrangements for next month quickly arrive, then more arrangements fill the diary and are suddenly tomorrow’s commitments, and before you know it another year has passed by. And then you retire.
But here’s the thing, and the point which we really wanted to make: Michaela and I feel that we’ve reversed the trend, at least to some degree. Travelling as extensively as we do, and visiting as many different places as we do, has had the effect of stretching out time once again – the express train now ambles along the rails like a track tester.
On New Year’s Day, we looked back exactly twelve months and remembered welcoming in 2023 in Pedasi, in Panama, in a bar full of a mix of people from the local farming community and American expats, and we both commented that it seems a lot longer than twelve months ago. It’s even difficult to think that arriving in Hanoi in March to resume the COVID-truncated South East Asia trip of 2020, took place in the same year as the one which has only just ended. Life has without doubt slowed down, time is no longer passing so quickly.
If we had been inclined to make a new year’s resolution this year, it would have been to change as little as possible about our lifestyle. If we have indeed cracked the conundrum of life racing by at an unstoppable pace and replaced it with years so packed with experiences that time is expanding, then we raise our glasses and toast our good fortune.
Back to that Pink Floyd song, and another short excerpt which we can confidently say is NOT us:-
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time,
Plans that either come to nought or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The song is gone, the time is over, thought I’d something more to say
Nope, that sure as hell ain’t us. Any more. Retirement travel ROCKS.
41 Comments
Adam Dark
Hope you’re well, Phil. Enjoying your posts.
Phil & Michaela
Well hello Adam, how nice to hear from you. Yep, we’re good, hope you are too. I have no idea if you’ve been following our travels over the last four years (yep, it’s four years since retirement), we’ve been to a fair few places and living that dream which we had back in 2019. So far it’s been everything we wanted it to be. Hope things are good for you and that life is treating you well.
restlessjo
It takes both halves of a couple to want this to make it work as well for you as it does, Phil. It isn’t everyone’s dream to travel. My other half thinks we’ve seen more than our fair share of the world, while I still hunger after new places and experiences. It is quite wearing being the partner who always says ‘why don’t we?’ Often to grudging assent, and yes, he does usually enjoy it when we go away, but he is essentially a home body and we have a full and quite interesting life here in the Algarve. We juggle the two, and I focus mostly on loving my life and not hankering after the unreachable, nice though it would be.
Phil & Michaela
Well Jo we’ve had a number of conversations around this very subject, how it will be if or when one of us is “done” with this, either mentally or physically – and we really don’t know how it would pan out, how we would feel. I sympathise with your situation, but you are absolutely spot on to focus on the things about your life which you love. There’s always plenty when you look thoroughly, isn’t there.
restlessjo
Yes 🤗🩵
Helen Devries
As you know, our traveling days are done…but the days are still full and at least we can say we have been, seen and met! Keep on going all the time you can.
Phil & Michaela
That’s the plan, Helen. I guess our wish is that when our travelling days come to an end, it’s because we’ve made the choice rather than anything else…but of course that’s not within our control.
Helen Devries
Wasn’t in ours, or we’d still be on the move!
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
I love that Pink Floyd song. Having just retired at the end of October, I agree that retirement rocks. It’s taking a little getting used to, but I like it.
Phil & Michaela
All I can say is, I wish you a wonderful retirement and hope that you love it as much as we do (and this is coming from someone who loved work too!!)
Gilda Baxter
Interesting post and we can certainly relate to it. We often talk about how time appears to slow down when we are travelling, doing and seeing different things every day. At home we feel that days are flying by at an scary fast pace.
As a teenager I was so in a hurry to reach 18 and be independent, now I desperately want time to slow down. We both love travelling, but we know there will be a time when might not be physically able to travel as much and I just hope we will both be content with the fact that we have lived the life we want. Safe travels 😀
Phil & Michaela
Yes, all so true. We absolutely cannot wait to get travelling again now, especially when what’s coming next is so exciting!
Miriam
Oh, I absolutely LOVE this post and I couldn’t agree more. Time does indeed fly by but somehow in travel it also slows down and it all blends into one (if that even makes sense). And yes, whilst in many ways our bodies have changed we feel young inside. I sure don’t feel my 58 years! Thanks for a fabulous post. We’re off to Vietnam soon, a place I’m sure you have many fabulous memories of. Cheers to a great 2024!
Phil & Michaela
Thank you so much for those lovely comments, Miriam. Vietnam is absolutely one of our favourite countries visited so far, we so enjoyed our journey around the country, not least because of the diversity of its different places. Would love to know whereabouts you’re headed. Oh and by the way, you share your age with Michaela, she’s a young 58 too!
Miriam
Yes, 58 is a great age! 😄Great to hear that you both loved Vietnam Phil. We’re spending three months there, going from South to North, and very much winging it! Not much is planned yet though I’ve been doing lots of research. We were supposed to be going with friends but we’re now on our own. Did you and Michaela have an itinerary or much planned beforehand?
Phil & Michaela
Well, our style wherever we go is to have an outline plan in terms of timescales and logistics, but we don’t commit to too much and then rarely or never end up sticking to it. We went the opposite way, north to south, our stops being Hanoi, Halong Bay, Tam Coc, Hue, Hoi An, Da Nang, Can Tho, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), before we headed to Cambodia. Don’t be afraid to use what they call the “sleeping bus”, they are so cool!
Miriam
Yes I’ve heard a lot about the sleeper buses and also the overnight trains which we’ll no doubt use as well. Picking up a Vietnam map today to help give us that “outline plan” you mentioned. Very excited!
Phil & Michaela
Excellent! Yes we did the overnight train from Nin Binh to Hue. Promise me you won’t overlook Tam Coc – stunning scenery and a great little village with friendly family cafes/restaurants.
Miriam
Sounds wonderful! And no, we won’t miss it. How long were you in Vietnam for?
Phil & Michaela
30 brilliant days. Would happily return to see more.
Miriam
One day!
Monkey's Tale
I agree, we often look back to a trip from earlier in the year and it feels like so much longer ago than it was. We don’t want things to change either. Hope Michaela is better 🙂 Maggie
Phil & Michaela
She’s back on form now, thank you Maggie 😉
Alison
Great post Phil, and it’s true that time seems to go faster as you get older. You have found the perfect way around it though and fill every second with your travels. I do like to sit with my feet up though for an hour or so every morning with my coffee in the garden.
I like your reference to the grandfather clock and being bored on family days, I had many of those growing up!
Phil & Michaela
Thank you Ali. Strange how it’s so easy to trigger childhood memories, isn’t it? Even our current round of frosty mornings makes me think of walking to school.
Alison
I suppose being older we have so many memories 😁, those frosty mornings were the bain of my life and I was always falling over
Travels Through My Lens
You’ve summed up perfectly my feelings about aging; I’m closer to your age and love being retired, but sometimes I still feel like a youngster inside. Traveling keeps our eyes open and our spirits young. We love living in France and have many destinations in Europe planned for the next year before heading home to the US. In fact, we’re off to Spain in just a few days!
Phil & Michaela
Enjoy! Yes you’re right, travelling definitely keeps the spirit young…😊
Lookoom
Your thoughts on our relation to time are interesting. I don’t have the key to explaining the elasticity of time either, what seems so long seems so short at other times. Though travelling isn’t it like living several lives at once, and how can it be done without colliding sometimes?
Phil & Michaela
There’s not so much chance of collision once the pressures of working life are a thing of the past…perhaps…
wetanddustyroads
I think if you have a job and goals to achieve, time passes quickly. But when you make a concerted effort to be calmer, while having fun, time is actually irrelevant. A few years ago, we made the decision not to rush the time — there’s that saying: Grab the day with both hands and live life to the fullest, because you’re never going to have this day over again!
Phil & Michaela
Absolutely my philosophy. Even in business, one of my mantras to my staff was…hit targets today and the week looks after itself, hit targets for the week and we have a good year. I apply the same philosophy now to life generally; make something of today and you end up having a great year!
Andrew Petcher
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be granted a wish to experience how it would feel to be back in my 20 year old body and mind. Probably kill me.
On the subject of clocks I used to go to a dentist surgery in Rugby in a big old house with a grandfather clock in the waiting room. The waiting room was always silent but for the relentless tick-tock of the clock. It was like waiting in a condemned cell.
Phil & Michaela
Well…as a child I had a brutal dentist in Derby, every kid in town was scared witless of her. For years afterwards as an adult I was too scared to visit a dentist and went years without a check-up, all due to her sadism. And in direct correlation with your ticking clock, I am still to this day unnerved by leather sofas, which bring to mind sitting on the one in her waiting room, dreading the moment when it was my turn to be butchered.
Andrew Petcher
You describe the Whitehall Road dental surgery perfectly. Sixty years later I still live in fear of dentists.
Toonsarah
You’re so right about time speeding up when you get older and I can confirm that it’s exactly the same if you don’t have kids! I read an explanation once, which made sense to me. If you are five years old a year is 20% of your life so it appears much longer than when you are 50 and it is only 2% of your life. And I agree about it being elastic too, although perhaps because we take shorter trips I find time can pass more quickly when we’re away than at home, especially towards the end of the trip. I would swear the last week of a trip is much longer than the week before we left 😆 But when we get home it feels as if we’ve been away far longer than we have, and I wonder why there aren’t more changes in the neighbourhood!
Phil & Michaela
I have to admit, I love the fact that the year seemed longer
grandmisadventures
I don’t know, I still feel like getting to Saturday from Monday morning seems like an eternity… It is amazing though how much faster time seems to go as you get older. I’m with you though, I want to fill up my days with adventures and experiences and then come careening into the finish line with all the miles I’ve been with the last words being ‘What a great ride that was’.
Phil & Michaela
You’re younger than me, Meg….travel ambitions in your retirement is the key!
Latitude Adjustment: A Tale of Two Wanderers
Travel is life. March on!
WanderingCanadians
It sounds like you’re living your best life!