What's Your Focus: Time Elapsed or Time Remaining?

“Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort.” 
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

There's not a lot to do when you're at the gym on the elliptical and you've decided to turn off the video monitor and tune out the news. After the umpteenth sensationalized "news" story about the ill-fated Malaysian airliner that went missing -- and no new information whatsoever (how is this still called news?), off went the video. Just couldn't bother to look at it any more.

So my eyes drifted to the dashboard of my gym equipment. To the left was the upwardly ticking time count of time elapsed. It was a boost to see the minutes passing, knowing the longer I stayed with it the better my heart was pumping and the closer I was to reaching my goal. After a while it got boring. I wanted to know how much time I had left until my body and mind could get on with the rest of my day -- so I could get started on other things.

What is your focus? Do you usually cast your eye on the past -- what has elapsed -- or toward the future -- the time left? Which perspective is more beneficial? Or are they both of equal value?
Is it possible to be squarely in the middle, or as wise people often say, in the present moment?

I then started looking at the right side of the monitor and found another counter, another mechanism to measure and apportion time as Mr. Yates so eloquently put it, which was distance traveled. You have three choices for how you want this information delivered to you: total strides / strides per minute / total distance in miles. I decided I prefer watching the last digit on total strides taken. Watching it skip predictably by twos from 0 to 2 to 4 to 6 to 8 and back to zero. Just the predictable monotony of knowing there was forward progress, without enough information to really be aware of just how much progress was being made.

I haven't worn a watch for three years. It's liberating mostly but also maddening at times. I however am rarely late and usually early, thanks to my iPhone. I measure and apportion time by the seasons, by daylight, by regular routines of my day and my family's day, by my handwritten calendar, and by the alarms that go off in my life to remind me to go places and be places. The forward moving pressure of expectation is comforting in that expectation can indicate routines: things to look forward to and to anticipate. But it all shifts, I imagine, when you find yourself in the middle of some wonderful thing you don't want to end and you feel you are losing time (I don't mean to say that I wanted the workout to never end of course, you know what I mean). As always, it's a matter of perspective.

As I move further into my 40s, I have to admit at times the horizon in front of me seems a bit more abbreviated. There's more behind me than may be ahead. But honestly, unless it is the impetus for living life right now more fully, what good is it to have shadowy guesses about how much more time one has left? If the past decade has taught me nothing else, it's shown me no one knows how much time is left.

So these are the deep thoughts one can find floating through their mind when they have the courage to turn off the tube and the yammering yahoos on it, collect their thoughts, think, or let their mind drift. My heart was beating and my body was moving. Blood was pumping and lungs working. I wasn't going anywhere in particular but into my own thoughts. But it felt good to be there.

By the way, if you want to read a metered, measured, spartan but weighty and brilliant novel both structurally and content wise, please pick up Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. It really is a masterful work. You can even listen to it on audio, on the elliptical, narrated by the amazing Mark Bramhall.