Time Isn't Real: Attempting to Understand How the Pandemic has Affected Future Time Perspectives
Many of us have experienced the deep-seated panic that comes from realizing that we’re getting old. This hits at different ages for different people (1), and impacts us in varying ways: but the Big Realization is that our lifetimes are, in some capacity, limited. And whether that end point is visible or not is irrelevant–it’s the fact that with every passing second, we unwillingly come just a little closer to the finish line. What I learned while researching this piece is that there’s actually (2) a psychological explanation for this particular brand of existential crisis (3) and that my own has been wildly rearranged by our current events.
Future Time Perspective is an individual’s conceptualization of their remaining personal lifetime. That perspective is characterized on a spectrum that ranges from an expansive view, where the person believes that the future is open and full of opportunities, to a limited view, where the person believes that the future is one in which time runs out. What we do with that perspective (and, more importantly, that existential crisis), was studied as the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST).
SST suggests that constraints on time horizons shift our priorities so that they are more heavily regulated by emotional states. When time is limited, we tend to prioritize what is typically categorized as short-term happiness–a good meal, seeing a close friend, and so on–over the expansion of our horizons, which in many cases may lead to long-term (but not immediate) happiness–pursuit of educational degrees, attendance of networking events, and dietary changes, for example. Typically, as we age and perceive our time on this planet as increasingly finite, we prioritize emotional states, which is why older people tend to have smaller social circles and are more averse to new experiences. And while at first, this may seem to negatively impact our happiness, older people are as satisfied with their lives as young people who prioritize widening their life limits, if not more so.
But what happens in times of crisis, when the timeline horizon for both old and young people is equated? Research suggests that the age factor disappears. Shortly after September 11th, SARS, and HIV, for example–events in which people, regardless of age, were blatantly confronted with the fragility of their own lives–both young and old people developed a unique sense of time. Because of this, they acted similarly, perhaps suggesting that the future time perspectives of both age groups were at that point comparable.
So then why is COVID-19 any different than previous global crises? There is stark tension between the constant reminder of our mortalities–in the news, on the street, and in every sanitizing action you take to protect yourself and your loved ones–and the tangible act of preventing the spread of COVID-19–shelter-in-place laws–which have us all at home with very little to do and overwhelming amounts of time on our hands. As far as hours in the day are concerned, we have everything and nothing, all at once.
We’ve dealt with this in ways that support both limited and expansive future time perceptions. We’ve spent hours texting our friends, rekindled relationships, and come home to our families; actions that all suggest that we’re suddenly prioritizing what motherhood and apple pie have taught us matters. But we’ve also signed up for online classes, taken the sudden flexibility in our schedules to reassess our career choices, and gone to therapy to begin the work of untangling and understanding lifetimes of complications and confusion. Because we feel as though we have the time, now. We have it, and yet we really don’t.
I initially opened a Google doc to draft a well-researched piece on my own future time perception, and how it has affected me to essentially blink and find out that two weeks of my life have suddenly gone, and that while I spent them reading amazing books, writing poignant articles, and talking to some of my favorite people in the world, I also mostly sat in front of a computer screen deciphering rude Slack messages and zoning out at Grey’s Anatomy. Quarantine has allowed me to get off the Silicon Valley freeway of work, and to spend it doing good but hard things that I otherwise wouldn’t have the mental space to figure out.
For me, that has meant the significant expanse of my future time perception. It’s meant coming to terms with the fact that life is actually quite long, and that I have all the time in the world, which isn’t something anyone ever tells you. And while this novel realization might initially seem to create a dichotomous relationship with my impatient (4) nature, I’ve actually been presented with a much starker reality: that I’m a little over a quarter of the way through my lifespan, and that I have a seemingly endless void of time to fill–and that the key word here is that it needs to be filled, not wasted.
I’ve learned that I’ve been alive for a long time–and should all go well, I’m nowhere near done, and I’ll hopefully double and triple my current existence. So in the midst of the pandemic, I, like many, have realized I need to get it together–not because life is short and people are suffering, but rather because if life and time do indeed stretch out as far as I’ve come to think they do, they had at least better be entertaining.
Carstensen notes that “Endings need not be related to old age or impending death. They need simply to limit time horizons.” I consider this a more academic–though no more eloquent–way of stating the immortal words of G-Eazy: “Time isn’t real; ain’t shit on my wrist.”
I trace my first existential crisis back to my twentieth birthday, when, having taken a gap year where I was transferring from a music conservatory to a more traditional university, I realized I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but vowed that whatever I would do, it would not involve being an opera singer.
Well, of course there is, millennial. You’re not actually that special.
Which gives me some hope for the other types, because nothing says “your problems are valid” like scientific justification.
Your words, not mine.