What Causes Time to Matter More to Us
Crows Feet Prompt # 23: Creature Comforts
I first saw the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru about forty years ago. The film is a story of transformation. The subject is a bureaucrat who changes his life after a terminal diagnosis. The title means “to live.”
I thought of Ikiru when I read Ann Litts’ moving story response to Crows Feet Creature Comforts prompt. A good prompt is a nudge where writers find their way. And build on the work of others. Thank you, Robin James.
At the end of her story, Ann writes:
But I have to say, the greatest creature comfort I found since I retired was simply TIME.
Ann now has more time to do what she wants.
For Ikiru’s protagonist, Kanji Watanabe, a cancer diagnosis brings him face-to-face with death. Time’s endpoint rushes toward him.
Watanabe perceives less time. So he transforms how he thinks and acts.
He experiences what psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom in Staring at the Sun labels “an awakening experience.”
I won’t give away Ikiru’s plot details. But it’s a powerful story.
A story of redemption.
I’ve watched Ikiru many times to remind myself of its message and to ask:
Am I living the kind of life I want to live?
How do such stories work?
In Being Mortal, surgeon Atul Gawande writes about the research of Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen. Carstensen discovers when people’s “life fragility is primed they shift their motives and goals.”
Whenever I watch Ikiru, I think about my life’s fragility. I’m a cancer diagnosis away from losing precious time.
Retirement can also be a life fragility moment. Perhaps that’s how it works for Ann. Time frees up even as it winds down.
Gawande writes about how older people experience more positive and fewer negative feelings. They are happier and less depressed. They also focus more on being than doing.
I think it's more complicated than that. The original Ikiru film poster you see above shows Watanabe sitting on a swing and smiling. He’s happier and more contented. But the swing exists because of what this transformed man has done.
I look in the mirror each morning before I shave. Don’t worry. I’ve given you the PG version.
The shirt-off is a fragility moment.
One gift of being 73 and in life’s final quarter is that I no longer need someone else’s story to remind me of finitude.
Older people are happier because they can no longer deny death. So, if we can, we do things that matter most to us. We spend more time with family and friends. We focus inward more than outward. We give more than we receive. Things matter less; status loses its grip.
Is it any wonder we become happier and more satisfied?
Growing old gives us the gift of time by reminding us how precious time is.
And we fill those moments wisely.