Aging and the Art of Living

1. Chronometric Regimes: The Life Course, Aging, and Time

1 Chronometric Regimes The Life Course, Aging, and Time Time is so precious in this realm. DANTE ON PURGATORY Introduction For most of us daily situations, experiences, and activities are under the stresses of time, more precisely, under chronometric stress. When we are in a hurry, when we must do too much in too little time, or when we would like to stay longer, we feel the pressing and pushing presence of time. Although time schedules can clash with our preferences, it would be hard for us to live without chronometric time. If a plane left only when the pilot felt like going, it would disturb normal activities. Where does the useful application of chronometric time begin, and where does it end and clash with processes or forms of meaning that are not preprogrammed according to time schedules? To be able to clarify such issues, we must first define chronometric time as the time that is indicated by clocks and calendars, making it possible to measure the duration of a process or to locate in time an event like the birth of a baby, a future appointment, or the death of a person (Baars and Visser 2007). In most traditions the movements of the celestial bodies have been taken to represent time, defining years, seasons, months, day and night, hours and minutes. These movements of the earth around the sun and of the moon around the earth still U V Chronometric Regimes 13 determine the general pattern of chronometric time, although the irregularity of these movements must occasionally be corrected (for instance in leap years) by the extremely precise clocks that have been developed over the centuries. In traditional thought about time, we can still see that time has two important aspects. The first is its function as a general tool to measure the durations of processes and to locate them on a time scale. The second aspect is its embedding in narratives about the meanings of this temporal dimension in which all that is vitally important manifests itself and goes by, including the lives of unique human beings. One of the problems of our contemporary understanding of time is that it has become dominated by its function as a tool for measurement. Chronometric time has become more and more precise. The cesium atomic clock, for instance, is based on a cycle of over 9 billion vibrations during one (old) astronomical second (Baars and Visser 2007). No matter what the instrumental qualities of these different clocks are, time as a general tool for measurement must be based on processes that are not influenced by the processes it should measure. Therefore, the movements of the earth and the moon were excellent candidates to form the basis of a general time concept, since their regular movements are clearly independent of anything happening on earth. In other words, time as a general instrument of measurement is completely instrumental, detached, and empty. It is never short or pressing; it measures millions of years as easily as nanoseconds. The shortage of time or its pressure comes from elsewhere—for instance, from harsh and unrealistic forms of planning or from narratives of competitive efficiency. Although it would be more difficult to coordinate our activities without a shared clock time, the question remains whether the way activities and processes are caught in a seemingly autonomous chronometric network has not begun to control or restrict the meaning and nature of what we do. The metaphor of “deadlines” might remind us that we could also live a good life with less chronometric pressure and with a stronger awareness of other times. The question is what place time should have in our lives and how we can develop a richer understanding of aging. Many studies have already discussed how chronometric time shapes and dominates daily life. However, in this chapter I reflect on a matter that has not been discussed very much, namely, the temporal perspective on the life course, with an emphasis on the organization and understanding of aging. The term life course refers to the ways in which individual lives are organized and structured over time. This perspective profits from a prima facie credibil- 14 Aging and the Art of Living ity: since a society has by definition a larger time span than individual people, it must make provisions for a continuous succession of the generations, including education...