I read this pretty interesting post, 'The Tail End', at the start of the pandemic. For those who don't have the three minutes to spare (it's mostly full of long graphics), here's the quote that best summarizes the main idea:
"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."
It's a clever idea, and an important insight. A little earlier in the post is another quote that explains the overall point:
"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."
At the start of the pandemic, perhaps I didn't have the energy to muster up my usual skepticism. Things were changing; I was adjusting. If you had asked me then, I wouldn't have just agreed, I would have added - we are running out of time, so savor every moment, live with zest! I was like a fish swimming around the internet, mouth agape as I gobbled up lines from every angler. A few months of almost total alone time ensued, and I think my feet are finally back on familiar ground. What I realize now is that although these ideas about how we spend time with others always looked good at first sight, there are a couple of problems with that post's basic assumptions.
The first is a belief that I see as a dangerous trap - any and all time spent with a person should count as quality time. You might sit alongside a classmate all semester or greet the same colleague every morning for month after month, but you wouldn't reminisce on those moments as 'quality time'; a shared space is no guarantee of forward movement. This problem, easily acknowledged (and dismissed) among casual acquaintances, is more urgent when it goes ignored in how we spend time with friends and family. Many may disagree that their closest relationships are on the pause button, but I fear their protest is only a question of degree. Every once in a while, the effort of forward movement becomes too much and we deal with each other like the head of HR is peering in on the interaction; this is a teetering moment because it won't take much more to fall into a rut.
This bring me to my second problem with an assumption underlying 'The Tail End' - people more or less remain as they are throughout the course of a relationship. It's right there in that first quote - 93% of the time is gone, and now 5% remains (the math adds up if you read the post). It suggests that past and future are part of the same unbroken sequence, like the way you can put a slice of takeout pizza into a container so you can finish the pie tomorrow. But I don't think it's quite accurate in terms of relationships with people. If you assume the person you saw yesterday will still exist when you reconvene next week, you might be surprised to discover that someone went into the refrigerator and changed all the toppings while you were away.
This isn't meant to lead into one of those big and bold, bulletin-board, fortune cookie ideas that remind us how death lurks in the little tick-ticks of each second. I'm not here to talk about the sudden tragedy of an unexpected death - that's a completely different thing. But 'The Tail End' isn't about that, either - it's a wise, measured look at the time we have and what we should do with it. What I'm thinking about is a little different because my belief is that most of us suffer through small deaths each and every day; it doesn't take much to ensure the person that existed yesterday will never see tomorrow. Of course, each death is accompanied by a birth, a new idea that whisks away the bones of a discarded belief, revised ideology, or forgotten commitment. The overall effect is barely noticeable, I hardly recognize it even in myself and I'm pretty much in my own head all the time; I suspect I miss almost every instance of these changes among my closest contacts.
I'm thinking now that considering these two small objections, I can say that although the formula above looks good, the numbers both within and outside the equation are probably wrong. I would first suggest that for the most part we've used up around 99.9% of our time with anyone given how people are always in the midst of some kind of change. We're all well past the tail end, we're standing precariously on the tip. The second aspect, the numbers outside the equation, are equally driven by this reality of constant change; rather than one finite set of interactions with each person, we have an essentially infinite set of opportunities to interact with each iteration. But if you don't catch me the way I am today, you probably have very little opportunity to do so again; the urgency suggests we should give up our tall tales and focus on the reality of the moment, while there is still time.
