Time and Aging ⏰

I’ve been playing with time (feel free to join me in this inquiry): As awareness, time moves through me, (rather than me moving through time). This sounds abstract but you might recognize it in the universal experience of aging.

I just went to my 20 year high school reunion. Our outer lives were pretty different—most of us now have kids, jobs, homes, and we’re no longer living with our parents. Yet the experience of aging is strange because despite these outer changes, the subjective experience of being “me” is consistent. Even when that “me” is experiencing nostalgia, grief, fear, longing. I think this consistency of “I” is why we’re surprised when our bodies stop working like we’re used to. Our experiencing is continuous and consistent, so it’s weird to feel something we associate with ourselves be inconsistent (our bodies, our worlds).

Resting as this consistency, this awareness-subjectivity, we’re not our bodies (or our worlds), and it’s a little more relaxing for stuff to work differently. And looking from this perspective, we’re also not time-bound—time is not a foundational structure of being-experience, it’s more a thing that happens inside of experiencing.

I am aware. I have thoughts, feelings, sensations. I’m more aware of some things than 20 years ago, and less aware of others. But all of this happens in an experiencing which doesn’t ever really feel different. Because it’s not. It’s subjective experience.

I find this contemplation both grounding and liberating. I’m steady in the face of transformation. How about you? How’s time and its impact on your sense of self?

With love, Jordan