We know that, of course. A week is 7 days, 168-something hours. That’s understood. That’s scientific. That’s accurate. That matches reality measured through machines that speak in 0s and 1s. Insurance companies like it, and so do our employers and the government. It is simple and uniform across time and space.
But that’s not what I perceive. My perception isn’t scientific. It isn’t uniform from one week to another. It isn’t even uniform in my experience versus in my memories.
What’s happening? My parents are in town to visit me. They arrived a couple of weeks ago. One of those weeks I had time off from work, while the other I worked as usual, albeit with my parents’ company at home. That made me think of how differently I perceived the time span of those weeks, and how much more happened during the week when I had time off and we were exploring the city.
Which reminded me of my two weeks in the US earlier this year. It wasn’t many days off, but if I start talking about my time in the USA, I can probably go on for a while. It was just so many adventures I ventured out on, novelties that kept my brain focused and active.
But then ask me about how was my week working this week? Or the month before my parents arrived? Or the first six months this year apart from the brief travels, hangouts with friends and so on. I don’t remember much. It felt like one of those frequency modulation graphs, where the information squeezes in and loosens out depending on the input signal.
Those loosening of the wave phases feel unspectacular when I’m living through them. Of course, there’s always a local maxima worry or errand to make me feel like something’s happening that deserves my attention. But the local maximas of worries, joys or wonder are so tiny that one day is really not different than the next day. One week not very different from another. I think that’s how one goes living years and years without having much memories to go back to.
When I think of my time spent in this way, I feel like the average lifetime isn’t nearly long enough for all that I’d like to do. It is a scary realization that I’ve already spent years and years of my cumulative limited lifetime that I don’t have any memories of.
But then, when I look back on my time in the USA, or with my friends in India, or working on the exciting internship project some 9 years ago in Delhi, I’m reminded of how much life can be lived in 2 weeks or 2 months’ time. An average lifetime seems totally reasonable to live to the point of exhaustion from the joy of being alive every day of it. Those times felt meaningful when I was living through them, and long when I reflect back on them. The opposite of that is lack of meaning in the now, and very few, if any, memories of the time upon reflecting.
And that’s where I think the myth of the 4000 week life lies. No one prepares us for this reality of relative time dependent on what’s being done during that time. Does it even make sense to maximize this perception of time spent by doing things that yield better “Return on memories created”? Right now, I like to think so. At least that’s what the last ten or so years have showed me.
I am not able to drive any point home here, and I’m feeling quite mentally, especially emotionally exhausted today. I’ll end this article here, rather abruptly. Maybe I’ll come back to it and give it a nicer closing, or maybe I won’t.
In any case, thank you for reading.