On Time

"A lifetime is not linear, but instant."

A couple of weeks ago, I walked past a young man, tall, sandy hair brushed across his forehead, navy blue hoodie, kind eyes. ‘Oh gosh!’ I said to myself. ‘That’s Finn! I used to teach him!’

Of course, it wasn’t Finn, because I taught Finn back in 2003 when Finn would have been 13 years old. It is a common glitch: the fate of the teacher who has taught hundreds (thousands maybe?) of children over a 25 year period, many of whom stay in her mind, unchanged, frozen in time and attached to classrooms, playgrounds and the odd high street in North London. (‘What are you doing here Miss??’)

I wonder if I speak for many other teachers when I say that we recall people in a variety of contradictory ways. I remember certain individuals really well; certain faces but without their names; and certain cohorts but not the specific year. I sometimes misremember, too. Amid all the nasty, the joys of social media include keeping up with the progress of those stellar youngsters who have been good enough to look me up and reconnect: and yet still I am blindsided by news of a wedding, or a new baby. Yes, yes I knew they had graduated, yes obviously I know they have a job now, yes, they are doing great things but - hang on, who’s that tiny person on their feed?

I am also fortunate enough to be in touch with some of their mums, too, who I got to know through the privilege of teaching or caring for their children. And here’s another way to have your mind blown - these lovely women are now grandmothers, posting beautiful pictures of the newly-confirmed four generations of their families.

I do realise that this is not just the domain of the ageing teacher; it’s also an unavoidable symptom of middle age, like brain fog and no longer being able to get up at 6am to do fitness bootcamps in the local park. Suddenly, I have one child doing GCSEs this year, and another whose imminent birthday will render her a teenager. I have a younger sister who has always been 9 years younger than me but who is now, inexplicably, about to celebrate a significant milestone birthday.

I feel now, in my very late forties, calmer, wiser, less impulsive (I can hear my family’s yowls of laughter from here), and happier than I have in a while. It is a privilege to grow old; as a very wise friend once said to me: what’s the alternative? There is none: it’s unthinkable and, in my current state of fairly good physical health, undesirable. So why is the sense of time passing so bittersweet and at times uncomfortable?

There are the obvious observations to make. There are many people I love, who are not getting any younger, and as we’ve established, there is no alternative to growing old, and I am not even going to finish this sentence. When our much-loved grandmother died 14 years ago, my mum and I went for a walk through the woods nearby, and I remember her turning to me and saying ‘how do we live, knowing that this is going to happen one day?’ I think of this often. I have an agreement with my parents that they will live forever, and I think we are for the most part able to defer the truth based on this understanding.

The sense of time passing is also rooted in nostalgia; fond memories of kids I have taught are also linked to happy times in my life: walking across Hampstead Heath to get to work; nights out in Camden Town; the birth of my own children; £50 easyjet flights to Prague (this last one has aged badly.) In her book Time Warped, Claudia Hammond explains this ability to time travel as being inherently linked to identity. ‘It helps us to cement our individuality and to search for meaning in a life we know to be finite,’ she says. ‘By examining the past, we can make the future where we cease to exist feel more distant.’

It seems unfair that times in the past when we have been unhappy, unsafe or upset can come back to haunt and trigger us, when there is no going back to or reliving past times we have loved and enjoyed. There is not a happier equivalent of PTSD, although in the first episode of my new podcast The Futures Project with brilliant guest Dr Cathy Rogers and peerless co-host Chloe Combi, we talk about ‘glimmers’ - the opposite of triggers: moments that bring joy and peace to us. We call for more ‘glimmer warnings’ - and you can listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

One of my favourite books is Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger, a story of a dying woman looking back over her life as a war reporter and historian, and recalling the events that have defined her, in a story that spans decades and continents. The narrative leaps back and forth, presents events from the perspectives of different protagonists, and positions memory as the most compelling albeit the least reliable of witnesses to our past.

If I ever decide to get an ill-advised favourite quote tattoo, well, first of all, please intervene because at that point you will know that enough of the time I have been banging on about in this piece has elapsed that I am no longer capable of making sensible decisions. But if I ever did, it would be from Moon Tiger, and this would be it:

‘Cry not in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once.’

Interested in learning more about my work in education and futures? Get in touch.