It’s one thing to start a new year — quite another to start a new decade. And, it is a daunting prospect to look back over 10 years as I prepare to turn the page on the decade closing in 2019. This past decade taught me, in large ways and small, how to stop casually blowing through the day’s hours. I’m intentional now in how I spend my time, and who I spend it with, even if it is an appointment with myself. Most especially, if it’s time for myself. You know that saying, 'Youth is wasted on the young?' I really understand that now as I reflect on how much I wasted of my youth.
Time stopped when I lost both of my parents during the early part of the decade, and I then spent the subsequent years coping with their absence in my life. No matter how grown-up you are, you’re never quite ready to go through that life passage. Ten years rushes by when monumental external forces are at play and emotional highs and lows have a deeper resonance.
Maybe that’s why the end of the decade kind of snuck up on me. But that’s actually normal. There’s scientific evidence that the older you get, the faster time seems to pass. Weeks that used to crawl just a few years ago seem to fly by. Recently, one of my friends explained the phenomenon through a simple mathematical formula. The older you get, each year becomes a smaller percentage of your life. So, to a 15-year-old, a year is 7 percent of a life that is made up of new experiences, first time events and pivotal moments. But for someone significantly older, let’s say 60, a year represents barely 1 percent of a life rich with landmark moments. For a 60-year-old, time keeps speeding up, passing in a blur.
I’m kind of jealous of the faithful diarists who have painstakingly preserved the memories and moments of the last 10 years all along. They can easily trace their journey from there to here and assess some meaning from the pattern. A far cry from me — scrounging for the bits and bytes of my life hurriedly jotted down on scraps of paper and/or quickly imputed into my iPhone calendars. And since the iPhone was only invented midway during the decade, I’m missing some stuff.
But depending on who you ask, I could have one more year to start journaling before the decade is over. There is an ongoing debate questioning whether 2020 is the real dawn of the new decade, or whether the new decade actually starts a year later, in 2021. Writing in "The Farmer’s Almanac," astronomer Joe Rao points out that decades "begin with the year ending in the numeral 1 and finish with a 0." He offers the example of Jan. 1, 2001, which kicked off the 21st century and the start of the new millennium. I don’t really care if the mathematical calculation is a year off. 2020 already feels important, and a new decade offers the cleanest of clean slates.
Four decades ago, the English rock band Led Zeppelin first sang these lyrics: “then as it was, then again it will be, ” lines from their song, “Ten Years Gone.” This poignant meditation on the past ends with a plaintive refrain, “Ten years gone, holdin' on; Ten years gone, holdin' on.” Goodbye 2019. I'll be holding on to the 10 years gone, which include special memories I can never forget. But when the clock strikes midnight tomorrow night, I’ll take a deep breath and look forward.
