Calculate how much is left

A trick to make little moments more meaningful

We recently received a notice from my youngest son’s preschool about various forms that need to be filled out before the school year starts. This is always tedious, and so I was grudgingly putting the task on my to-do list when I had a thought: This is likely the last time I will do this paperwork for this particular school.

Come fall of 2025, my little guy will start kindergarten, so 2024-2025 is his last year of preschool. We’ve had a kid at this particular preschool since 2011, with only one year off, so I’ve done the start-of-the-year paperwork a lot. But at this point I am well over 90 percent through the time I will ever have to devote to this chore. It doesn’t make it fun, but it does change my mindset a little. Indeed, calculating how much is left can make all sorts of mundane things feel more meaningful.

The upside of feeling older

In Cassie Holmes’ book, Happier Hour, this UCLA professor discusses some research about this mindset. It turns out that, as people get older, they tend to find a higher level of happiness in ordinary events. When you’re young, it’s the fantastic experiences that move the needle — a delectable dinner, a stunning concert, an amazing vacation. Older folks, on the other hand, can get just as excited by a walk with a friend. In Happier Hour, Cassie writes that “realizing their time is precious, people become more prone to savor even the simplest of moments.”

Of course you don’t actually need to be old to feel this way, but one way you can make yourself feel the equivalent of older is by reminding yourself that the still-to-happen proportion of any life experience might be quite small.

So, for instance, Cassie did this after once telling her young son to hurry up when he had literally stopped to smell the roses as they were walking to preschool. She walked her kid to school almost every day, and so she adapted to it as an every day activity. But her son wouldn’t be in preschool forever. On the day she was trying to get him to hurry up, she had already completed 80 percent of her walks with him to preschool. Knowing that allowed her to realize how precious those last 20 percent really were.

Nothing lasts forever

Some people automatically start to do this as they realize their kids are getting older. My oldest child is 17, and so will most likely be moving on to the next chapter of his life in a year or so. As we figure out how to spend Christmas and spring break this upcoming year, it definitely makes me think about how few family trips we may still have together. I hope he’ll travel with us as a young adult, but there’s no guarantee.

Now, to be sure, as mentioned in the previous paragraphs, I have a 4-year-old as well, so I’m not going to be an empty nester for a long time. But as I am pretty sure this is my last baby, I’ve definitely thought how close I am to the end of so many things with him. Over the past week he wound up waking me up in the middle of the night three times, wandering into my room when he woke up for some reason or another. It’s frustrating as he isn’t a baby anymore. But I also know that my older kids don’t do this. This won’t last forever. I am truly almost done with the little-kids-waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night stage of my life.

In any case, if there is something in your life you do frequently, and you’d like to imbue it with a bit more meaning, you might try this trick. Figure out how many times you’ve done it and figure out how many more times you have left. There’s no need to depress yourself — as I contemplate that the actuarial tables say I probably have a mere 2000 weeks to go in life. But it does make individual moments matter more. And that can make time, in general, feel more expansive.