priorities matter.
December 13, 2015 10:24 AM   Subscribe

The Tail End: "No matter what your age, you may, without realizing it, be enjoying the very last chapter of some of the relationships that matter most to you." (via)
In a post last year, we laid out the human lifespan visually...
But since doing the Life in Weeks post [previously on MeFi], I’ve been thinking about something else.

Instead of measuring your life in units of time, you can measure it in activities or events. To use myself as an example:

I’m 34, so let’s be super optimistic and say I’ll be hanging around drawing stick figures till I’m 90. If so, I have a little under 60 winters left... and maybe around 60 Superbowls left... There have been eight US presidential elections during my lifetime and about 15 to go. I’ve seen five presidents in office and if that rate continues, I’ll see about nine more. [...]

But these things aren’t what I’ve been thinking about. Most of the things I just mentioned happen with a similar frequency during each year of my life, which spreads them out somewhat evenly through time. If I’m around a third of my way through life, I’m also about a third of my way through experiencing the activity or event.

What I’ve been thinking about is a really important part of life that, unlike all of these examples, isn’t spread out evenly through time—something whose [already done / still to come] ratio doesn’t at all align with how far I am through life:

Relationships.

I’ve been thinking about my parents, who are in their mid-60s. During my first 18 years, I spent some time with my parents during at least 90% of my days. But since heading off to college and then later moving out of Boston, I’ve probably seen them an average of only five times a year each, for an average of maybe two days each time. 10 days a year. About 3% of the days I spent with them each year of my childhood...

When you look at that reality, you realize that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life. If I lay out the total days I’ll ever spend with each of my parents—assuming I’m as lucky as can be—this becomes starkly clear...

It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.
(see also Wait But Why - Life is a Picture, But You Live in a Pixel)
posted by flex (34 comments total) 54 users marked this as a favorite
 
Similar sentiment: Brandon Lee's epitaph
posted by otherchaz at 10:35 AM on December 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


Inspiring and depressing in equal parts.

Though I would argue that the average hour with your parents in your 40s is more...meaningful than in high school.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:40 AM on December 13, 2015 [21 favorites]


gottabefunky has a point. I've spent whole summers living with my parents and probably had less quality time with them than the 3 or 4 day visits I tend to do now. When seeing someone is an event, you do tend to make the most of it.

That said, this is depressing. I'm going to go and call my parents now!
posted by leo_r at 10:54 AM on December 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is kind of depressing, I potentially only have 21,900 days left to visit MetaFilter.
posted by pwally at 10:57 AM on December 13, 2015 [6 favorites]


1) Living in the same place as the people you love matters.

As someone who, as of this year, lives a time zone and an expensive flight away from the people I want to spend most of my time with, this really popped out at me. I moved here for professional reasons, and that's been great, but I've been thinking a lot about what my priorities in life actually are this year, and I don't have any clear answers. Except that it would be great to hang out with my best friends today or have dinner with my dad....
posted by heurtebise at 10:58 AM on December 13, 2015 [16 favorites]


SeeYourFolks.com: enter your parents' age, location, and your contact frequency to get an estimate on how many more times you can expect to call or visit them.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:09 AM on December 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


This is the Last Time I Will Ever See You--how weddings often mark the end of particular friendships. It's a similar thought on how life moves us away from one another.

My parents moved home to Chicago when I graduated from college, despite intentions not to, for various reasons. First my cousin's husband died. Then my father's mother (his father having died in the 50's) died; then his youngest sister. Then my parents' remaining uncles. Then my mother's mother (her father having died in the 60s). Then another cousin's husband. By then, my sister and I were both living on the same block in Chicago.

The panic I feel every time I contemplate my sister's moving is surpassed only by the panic at the thought of losing my parents. I am grateful for proximity is the only prayer I make any more.
posted by crush-onastick at 11:14 AM on December 13, 2015 [10 favorites]


Make sure this list is set by you—not by unconscious inertia.

The idea that "you" have anything but the most marginal control over this list, and not the other people on the list, not to mention time, change, entropy and other impersonal forces, is delusional. But hold onto that illusion of control! Believe me, I've tried.
posted by blucevalo at 11:23 AM on December 13, 2015 [8 favorites]


For me personally, the opportunities I've had and time I've spent far away from my parents and loved ones are ones that have significantly enriched my life and let me make more of it than if I'd stayed in New Hampshire - and that's something that's helped strengthen and deepen those adult relationships with my parents and some of my high school friends. It's not about staying in the same place or always being in the place as the people that you love - it's about prioritizing those connections even when you're not in the same place. Calls to say hi. Google chat. Skype. Facetime. Postcards. I managed it from the middle of the rain forest.

We're so lucky to have ready communication such that even though I live a 15 hour drive from my folks, I talk to them three or four times a week. I think about my best friend in Cote d'Ivoire who was in a refugee camp two hours walk away from his mother in Liberia but couldn't see her for two years, who saw his dad for the first time in 7 years after the Civil War ended and he saved up enough money for a cross-country bus to visit, or another friend who saw her mother this summer for the first time since she got married twenty one years ago (her mother moved to Liberia and got caught up in a variety of civil conflicts). But they're still family and still connected and it's still meaningful even if situations are not ideal.

Don't beat yourself up if you don't live close to the people you love. Love and connection and family can still work, even if it's intangible and across a lot of space. Proximity is a privilege, not a prerequisite.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:25 AM on December 13, 2015 [10 favorites]


Yeah, this really depressed me, but then I remembered that when we lived a short drive from my parents they drove me a little nuts and my husband and I fought about them all the time. But now they live a short flight away and whenever we visit we're all cognizant of the fact that we only do this a few times a year and we'd better make the most of it and not mess it up.
posted by town of cats at 11:35 AM on December 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


This post made me change my travel plans for 2016. Thank you mefi.
posted by lahersedor at 11:45 AM on December 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


Good article. I might move back to the city where all my friends are.
posted by my-username at 11:50 AM on December 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


I liked the post and really appreciate the sentiment, but I echo the others that the suggested advice seems hard to follow in a lot of circumstances. My Mom and Dad don't even live within driving distance of each other. I have a group of close friends who I'd love to spend more time with, but they're three timezones away from most of my family. Moving would increase time spent with loved ones, but it could only put a dent in the whole problem.
posted by brett at 12:18 PM on December 13, 2015


As I am at midlife now, with a LOT of regret over choices I did and didn't make (and usually made not in service to myself or my own wants, but for those of people who didn't give two shits about me in the first place), I fully realize, that bar my being plowed by a bus soon, I've not got a lot of time left, relatively speaking, to do what I want. But I've been afraid. Afraid of being judged and shamed, and afraid of being called selfish, attention-seeking, and a show-off. As you can imagine, this is some old shit. It's taking longer to slough off than I thought it would.

But today, before seeing these links, I was going over my new professionally-revised resume, one that's left me considerably lighter of cash for the holidays, but which looks great, and now the time has really arrived to look for a better, more rewarding, and personally fulfilling job. I'm scared shitless. Afraid everyone who sees it is some paragon of media, and will sniff and say, "Well, you're not enough. You don't meet our needs. You bothered why, again?" Ugh. I need to ignore this. I've let my entire life be taken over by this projection of low esteem, and it's left me in a shitty place, financially, relationship-wise, career-wise. And for what? Who are these perfect people I need to impress? Even the person who started in by saying similar garbage to me when I was 2 is long dead.

Just to chill for a sec, I stopped by Tiny Buddha and saw this in a blog post: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” Dammit, it's true. It's true. What is more important to us than the fear? Are not our lives - and the quality of our lives - more important than fear? Who is really watching us? And if "they" are judging us, then they're ignoring their own lives, and really, are those people whose opinions are worth a damn?

Excelsior, folks. We literally have a few weeks on this pebble in the face of eternity. When I go, if I get the luxury of knowing ahead of time, I want to have been satisfied that I did my best with the talents I have, for myself and for my fellow beings.
posted by droplet at 12:47 PM on December 13, 2015 [18 favorites]


The panic I feel every time I contemplate my sister's moving is surpassed only by the panic at the thought of losing my parents. I am grateful for proximity is the only prayer I make any more.

I wish I could tell you it'll be easy. But I can't. I don't think about Dad every day, or even every week, not anymore. But every couple of months? I'll see something, think "Dad'll love this," and remember.

The Cubs won 97+4 games this year. I'd give anything to know he saw that.

I wish I could tell you it was easy. But I can't.

You have to find other anchors. Your friends. Your SO. Your kids, if you have them.

Life is joy, but life is sorrow. It's life. We pretend we can cheat it, but it always is, and always will be, life. It doesn't cheat -- no matter how much you wish it would. Because I'd have stacked all the decks to have been at Wrigley this yes with my Dad.

(Christ, I'm crying at a pool bay at Disney World. I hope nobody thinks I'm a Benglas fan...)

But I was at was at Game 4 of the NLDS with a good friend. I still drink with my mom. Life is tragedy, but life is *not just* tragedy. Life is also triumph. My good friend's 5 year old daughter loves sashimi. My mom forgave me when I told here game 4 of the NLDS was the best baseball game I've ever been at. (Mixed Marriage.) I am crying at a Disney World bar. :-).

There's bad. There's wrong, and fuck, the world is full of that. But there's good. You have to find that, and hold it as long as you can.

If you ever need a shoulder to cry on, or a face to scream at? Let me know. I can't make it easy. But maybe I -- or your SO, or your friends -- can make it easier?

But don't fear what you have. Celebrate it. You won't have them forever. But you have them now -- and there are so many who never knew your parents. That makes you the lucky one. Billions never knew them.
posted by eriko at 12:52 PM on December 13, 2015 [12 favorites]


Well, THAT post wasn't depressing at all....(/sarcasm)
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 1:21 PM on December 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


:(
posted by gucci mane at 1:22 PM on December 13, 2015


Slightly tangental, but hopefully useful - my wife and I have taken the attitude that everything after age 50 is the bonus round. Before age 50 we kept our noses to the grindstone, and were frugal with nonessentials as we paid down debt. Making it to 50 without health or other major crises, and minimising our debt - we treated it like crossing a finish line and rewarded ourselves with a month in Europe.

Now that we're in the bonus round, our priorities are definitely different. We place personal goals and experiences ahead of work or obligations, and that includes opportunities to be with family and friends... or to go off and do our own thing. If/when bad stuff comes... well, no-one lives forever.

Now, I'm madly blessed, with health and financial stability, but mostly with an SO who is the one I was meant to be with. Life is good. Not perfect, and we've seen 3 out of 4 parents off to the afterlife. But the main point is that we have managed to shift our priorities so that life stuff gets top billing, and I think that this will minimize the regrets we will accumulate.

So, I guess the OP is a wake-up call for many. I'd like to flip it on its head - you have an unknown number of personal experiences/events ahead; the only one that counts is the next. Give each of these life experiences priority as it approaches, anticipate them with pleasure, and enjoy each to the fullest. Stop counting down.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:40 PM on December 13, 2015 [15 favorites]


I see things like this and it makes me aware of family visits for sure, but more than anything it reminds me that I should probably be listening to music like all of the time because there is very little reason/barrier not to do that.
posted by dogwalker at 1:51 PM on December 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


I calculated this a couple of years ago and told my mother and it made her cry. I felt bad. I was trying to explain why I was thinking of visiting more often. (She lives in a different country and I see her on average once a year for a week. She is nearly 70. Even if she lives to 90 and I double my frequency of visiting, chances are I'll only see her another 20 times. Fortunately this line of thinking makes me a lot more patient during visits when she is driving me INSANE.)
posted by lollusc at 1:54 PM on December 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


I used to worry about this, but oddly enough, my mom statistically is going to outlive me.

I had a bad heart murmur as a kid, and I've faced the fact that I'm gonna have the big one either at 50 or 70, yet every single woman in my mom's family who didn't get horrific cancer (1)/or was obese (1) lived past 90. Two of them lived past 100. Willard Scott mangled my great grandmother's last name one day in the late 1980's.

This terrifies me. Fuck being 90. I can barely stand being 44. Mom just turned 69 a couple weeks ago.
posted by Sphinx at 2:07 PM on December 13, 2015


Similar sentiment: Brandon Lee's epitaph

Seemingly unattributed there -- it is from Paul Bowles' novel The Sheltering Sky (thank you, commonplace book).

Some years ago I read about an exercise to keep you reminded of the inexorable passage of time: a grid 100 by 100, and you cross off a box each day. Ten thousand days is an immense gulf of twenty-seven years and change. At 18 I could scarcely have imagined my life at 45; now, a little past 45, I can barely conceptualize who I will be in my mid-seventies (if indeed I am still on this side of the turf). I undertook this once but even for someone of my mindset, the inexorable passage of days receding into an unremarkable blur was too much.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:14 PM on December 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


I was on AIM in highschool, Xanga in college, Facebook in my early 20s. I have friends and family I just moved away from and want to keep in touch with. None of us use face time, hangouts, or Skype. I live in a basement without cell reception. I want to keep in touch, but I'm not sure how. Any suggestions?
posted by rebent at 2:32 PM on December 13, 2015


As someone who's dramatically overnumerate and somewhat morbid, I avoid very much thinking about these things, but I think I'm safe if I close this page now and do something else. ;-)
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 2:35 PM on December 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Good article. I might move back to the city where all my friends are.

Few things have been as life-enriching as moving where my tribe had somehow all managed to settle. Life is so much better when the different neighborhoods of a city are lit by the lamps of people you know and like or, if you're lucky, love.
posted by sobell at 2:48 PM on December 13, 2015 [8 favorites]


The problem isn't necessarily not spending enough time with you parents relatives etc.

The problem is modern society making this an unreasonably difficult choice, through strictures on workers' freedoms over time and space. The societal framing as it is insists on a specific sacrifice - either your career, or your familial relations. It's a false choice unworthy of enlightened society.
posted by polymodus at 3:09 PM on December 13, 2015 [5 favorites]


Though I would argue that the average hour with your parents in your 40s is more...meaningful than in high school.

Or at least more pleasant, even when it isn't more meaningful.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:44 PM on December 13, 2015


The problem is modern society making this an unreasonably difficult choice, through strictures on workers' freedoms over time and space. The societal framing as it is insists on a specific sacrifice - either your career, or your familial relations.

That is a common problem for sure, but it's not always the only choice at stake, either. Moving from Kentucky to Boston took me away from my family, which sucks, but being gay it also improved my day-to-day quality of life in lots of little ways. What's that worth?
posted by brett at 3:57 PM on December 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


...It's worth plenty, I think, which is partly why I shared this post. I like that it doesn't outright advise "you should spend more time with your parents", for instance, because there's lots of reasons why you might move away - better educational opportunities, better job opportunities, getting away from a toxic place, getting away from toxic family, wanting to have a better quality of life in housing or travel or interests or entertainment, and so on and so forth.

It's more just doing the math that we might not consider if we're earlier on in our lives, that these relationships that were a large part of our lives so far could be at "their tail end" already in their everyday relevance to us; that you're not going to actually get much more in-person time or chance to connect out of them - way less than you might think, even.

And then knowing these facts (which are straightforward but maybe we just haven't considered them so starkly before) - if you're not in proximity to each other, you will see each other that much less; if you don't actively prioritize keeping in touch, you will keep in touch less - you can decide how important is it for you to physically be closer, to visit more often, call more often, and make the time you do get to spend together meaningful & pleasant. (I particularly like lollusc's take on this, above - knowing that the times you spend together will be few, you can be more patient about annoyances in dealing with them. I do think some meaningful relationships can be important enough to keep up but still be easier to handle in small doses, and I like that this piece doesn't discount that. It just points out you should weigh your priorities & make what time you have count.)

There's lots of stories out there about not realizing that everyday life got in the way of doing the work of keeping connected to people we care about. There's lots of stories about wishing we had people we care about in closer proximity to us, because let's face it, just that everyday sort of socializing in our lives, like people to grab a coffee with or see a show with, is necessary - as is the everyday and valuable sort of relationships where someone can watch your kids for you in a pinch or will check in on you regularly so you don't have worry about being sick or hurt with no one to help you.

Often we don't realize how very important those things can be to our well-being until we don't have them available. Staying connected is emotional labor; prioritizing proximity & a support network with all the socializing that maintaining those things require is emotional labor; it can be something people don't understand fully, or think is important enough, or have the experience maintaining that sort of thing. So it's simply another way to consider - that if we stopped to do the math we might re-allocate where we are investing our energy & time in our lives and relationships.
posted by flex at 4:36 PM on December 13, 2015 [8 favorites]


I think a fun experiment might be to do all of the rest of your life's dumplings in one day.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:20 PM on December 13, 2015 [6 favorites]


Every day spent away from my toxic family, and in contact with any member of my chosen family, is one more good day towards the countdown.

Due to disabling medical issues, I am expected to have a shortened lifespan compared to the average USian. If I predecease my folks, I hope it hurts them like hell when they find out about it long after the fact (my will specifies at least 29 days so they're informed after the halakhic period for intense mourning or a close relative). If my mother goes before I do, I look forward to shovelling as much dirt over her coffin as I am capable of moving. If my dad, I'll merely be relieved. If my sister goes, I'm indifferent; she hasn't harmed me directly, but neither has she done anything but take advantage (especially financial advantage) of my self-protecting absence.

I do have one person in my life that while I never know when or if I will see them again, knowing it will be less than a week total for the rest of our lives makes me want to sob whenever I think of it. if I lose them before I go, I think my heart will break permanently, no matter how much other love is in my life at the time. I'm crying now, and the only other thing I've cried about in years was the Tacoma Art AIDS America exhibit (still up before it goes to the Bronx - see it).
posted by Dreidl at 8:08 PM on December 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


I used to use this sort of thing as justification for getting loaded on the weekends, feeling that with only about 2800 weekends available, it would be a shame to waste one being sober.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:04 PM on December 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


This is hard for me. Six months ago, I was happily married, life was improving, and thinking everything is great. Now its officially over, last date, last homecooked meal, last kiss, and soon to be last time I sleep in that bed, step inside that house, last time I see the cats.... :(
posted by Jacen at 10:50 AM on December 14, 2015


Stop counting down.

30 Years Later, One Man Is Still Trying To Fix Video Games (13/12/27)
Chris Crawford owns 29,216 small plastic beads. Each bead is one of eight colors, and there are 3,652 beads in each color group. One bead represents a single day in Crawford's life. Each color group, therefore, represents one decade. The yellow beads are his childhood. The black beads are his teens. The greens are his inexperienced twenties, the oranges his restless thirties, the navy blues his settling forties and so on, all the way up to bead 29,216, which will represent his eightieth birthday.

Chris Crawford owns two jars. One is filled with the beads that represent his past, and the other is filled with the beads that represent his potential future.

Every morning, Crawford takes a bead from the jar that holds his future days and places it into the jar that holds the past. While he performs the ritual he tells himself not to waste the day.

This routine reminds him that life is finite. Each jar represents how much life Crawford has already lived, and offers an approximation of how many days he might have left.

Today, Crawford is sixty-three. "I have already expended most of my beads," he wrote on his blog a few years ago, when he turned sixty. "There aren't that many beads left, to finish everything that I want to do in my life."

Some might view the daily ritual as morbid: a grim reminder of one's mortality. For Crawford, it's a daily call to arms, a ceremony to inspire action. After all, he has much left to achieve, not least his life's work: trying to fix video games.
posted by kliuless at 12:12 PM on December 14, 2015 [4 favorites]


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