Although I do not have a coy mistress, I increasingly find myself contemplating Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress”. The poem is probably the best-known carpe diem, or “seize the day,” poem in English literature. The main theme of the poem is the need to take advantage of today because time passes quickly, and the day—and the opportunities it offers—will soon be gone. The older I get, and I will soon be having birthday number 72, the more aware I become of how quickly “time flies.”
You can probably remember how long a week seemed to take when you were young. Although the holiday may be different for you, I can well remember how long the two-week Christmas vacation seemed when I was in elementary school—and how long the two weeks before Christmas seemed to take, especially as the tree was put up and presents started being placed beneath it. These days, the years seem to be going by about as fast as the months used to. A number of theories address the issue of why time seems to go faster as we age, and that perception seems true for most people in most cultures. Many of the theories are based on the percentage of our lives each day occupies. The first day of our life, for example, one day accounted for 100 percent of our experience. As we age, each day accounts for a smaller percentage of our experience—a smaller slice of our “memory pie,” as it were.
As children, we become increasingly aware of death. Our observations of death teach us that life is a limited commodity, that no one lives forever. Our first experiences with death are of pets and older relatives. We can accept that dogs and cats age faster and die younger than humans, and having older relatives die seems to fit the natural order of things. Most of us are surprised when someone we know dies young, whether by disease or accident. I still remember when someone I knew in high school died in an auto accident at 16. While I was in my 20s, older relatives were dying in their late 60s and early 70s. At the time, that seemed really old to me. And then came Vietnam. Although I was one of the lucky ones who served in a relatively safe area, I knew a number of people—soldiers—who weren’t so fortunate. If I had any illusions about how long people were supposed to live, that period, probably starting with the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, convinced me of the need to seize the day.
At this point, most of my older relatives have died. Most them died of natural causes after having lived a reasonably long life. A few died in middle age of heart disease or cancer. Most of my academic mentors have also died, and many of my older colleagues have been falling by the wayside as well. A very long time ago, while I was still in early adolescence, my mother told me that her grandfather, who lived a very long life especially for that time, had said, “It’s hard to be the last leaf on the tree.” At the time I didn’t know that my great grandfather was paraphrasing a line from a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Last Leaf.” To my young mind, that was a powerful visual image.
As Martin Luther King said, most of us would like to live a long life. The main question, however, isn’t how long we’re going to live but how well. We can influence how long we live by making good “lifestyle” choices, especially with diet and exercise, but lifestyle choices aren’t the only influencing factors. I have known a few heavy smokers and drinkers who lived into their 90s, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule for those who smoke and drink. As a runner, I was a Jim Fixx fan and owned a copy of his The Complete Book of Running. I was surprised and saddened when he died of heart failure at 52 while out for a run. No matter what we do, we cannot guarantee a long and healthful life. We have a much better capacity for choosing how well we live than we do how long.
The first aspect of choosing how we live is, of course, awareness. We need to be aware that we are making choices. We choose what we eat; when, how, and how often we exercise; we choose what we read, listen to, and watch. We choose how we respond to and treat other people. We choose both our attitudes and behaviors. I don’t know about you, but I find that I need reminders from time to time that every day is replete with choices. Some of those choices seem so insignificant—what shirt to wear, what to have for breakfast—that we can make them without much conscious thought. And while that in itself isn’t especially important, what is important is being aware, if only for a moment, of the act of choosing. The more aware we are of the act of choosing when we make little choices, the better able we are to make the important choices with awareness.
When I was growing up, health “experts” were writing articles about the importance of chewing every bite of food 32 times, primarily because digestion starts in the mouth. They wanted to make sure we got the process off to a good start. I’m not sure that chewing that much really does help digestion all that much, but counting every chew up to 32 certainly increases awareness of the process: awareness of chewing, awareness of food, and awareness of eating in general. Also notice that chewing every bite 32 times would greatly increase the amount of time it would take to finish a meal.
While I agree that eating with awareness is a worthy goal, I’m not sure that counting chews is the best way to achieve that. Consider meditation. What are you aware of when you meditate or otherwise sit in silence? Have you thought about what it would be like to be aware of your awareness? Seizing the day typically implies some kind of action: seducing a coy mistress, staking a claim on a gold mine, investing in a “hot” stock at the right time, or otherwise “striking while the iron is hot.” What if seizing the day were a matter of becoming increasingly aware of the day, perhaps on a second-by-second basis.
Just for a minute, if you can imagine it now, consider what it would be like to be aware of your awareness while you are meditating or otherwise sitting in silence. You can practice this “awareness of awareness” exercise not only while sitting in silence, but also at any time your attention isn’t required for a specific task. The awareness of awareness exercise should probably have a warning: “do not attempt while driving or operating machinery.” My guess is that you’ll find your awareness of your awareness will increase your appreciation for the day you are seizing.