My $5 Seven-Day Pill Box Shares Its Invaluable Wisdom

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Time: [whoosh]

Life: Hey, did you just see Time run past here by any chance?

Me: What?? Where am I? Who are you? What’s going on?

What’s going on, indeed.

Lately, I’ve noticed my weekly pill container empties in a fleeting blip. Every. Single. Week. It’s become a beat, clanging out the passing of time, day by day until, uh-oh, there it is — an empty pill box. A week gone. Forever. Blip!

At first, it was surprising, but it’s become a little unsettling. I had no idea time went by this fast, and apparently, you don’t until eventually you do. It’s only as more pill boxes empty — either real pill boxes or the weeks they represent — that you start to notice.

So, now what? That’s a fine question, and it’s easier asked than answered. I wrote some time ago about a book I’d read, 4000 Weeks, which addresses the value of our time due to its finitude. That book was a huge eye-opener for me. But I think there is more nuance here. You can notice the value of time, and this points you toward how you might choose to spend your time. There is also the pace of time, which my pill box sheds light upon, and this shows me the reality of time. In a nutshell, I’d say its reality is about speed and relentlessness. It cares nothing for me, while its value cares everything about me.

Put another way, time’s reality is useful in physics. Time’s value is useful when passing through life.

There’s some good news in there. Knowing that a finite thing has bestowed upon me valuable rarities within a pair of endpoints — this is optimism to hold as I watch a movie run across the screen of my mind, playing a “Groundhog Day” rendition of a continually emptying pill box. There isn’t an Oscar category for such a thing.

I often wonder what time felt like to people long ago. I imagine living on a prairie or the side of a mountain, or even on the outskirts of a village, when the landline hadn’t been invented, let alone the computer, and forget about cell phones. If our attention had been hijacked less and the things we spent time on were more tangible, did we notice the physical world more? And if we did, had we noticed the time in front of us?

There’s something about noticing myself relative to physical things that allows me to detect my presence in the present moment. Sometimes it’s only for a few seconds, but I can see that I’m right here, in the now. When I’m looking at a screen, I forget about myself completely. This is when I spend time, oblivious that I’m doing so.

When I’m outside, I’m more aware of myself in the physical world. I figure this is because it’s deeply set within us to keep an eye on our surroundings, at least to the degree they aren’t 100% predictable — and when are they?

Yet, I can easily get into a reverie outside, swooning over the beauty or the interesting sights, or captured by the activity of others. This is similar to watching something on my screen. But I’ll vacillate between this reverie and a here-and-now wakefulness. It’s a gift of a precious few seconds or minutes, and I’ll gladly take it.

Of course, it’s not always a lovely experience to notice time. If you fill your weekly pill box, you might know this. I’ve used a pill box for years, but it’s only recently that I’ve noticed how quickly a week can pass under the radar. It’s speedy. This is not a fun fact.

Each week, after I’ve placed the last of the tiny medicinal pebbles into my mouth for swallowing, I set about to plip-plip-plip the pills into their daily spot for the coming week. It’s a meticulous task. Some kinds of pebbles don’t like to be accidentally missed, even for one day. Some are fierce to the system if accidentally consumed in double the dose. You’ve got to pay attention. I fancy myself a pharmacist when I do this.

But the act of doing this is a wake-up call. My pill box asks me, “Did you notice the preceding week? If so, how much did you notice? Did you enjoy it, take advantage of it, or make decisions based on its preciousness? How much of it will you remember?”

Oh, pill box, how you inquire so directly.

You’d think a week is short, because that’s how it feels, but lots has happened in history — even our personal history — in seven days. The Apollo 11 mission — the first man on the moon — happened in seven days, from the lift off on Earth until the moment they left the moon to return home. That extraordinary event, followed by humans everywhere, took the same time it takes me to run through a pill box.

I coach on the speedy slippage of time. One of the common features of ADHD is what’s called time-blindness. It’s exactly how it sounds — blind to time. There are sudden internal wake-up calls throughout our day or week when we shake out of deep reveries and become aware of the present moment. As you get to be an older ADHDer — raising my hand here — it makes for the perception of a very swift life.

This is why a pill box can be such a high-value $5 plastic item.

Maybe you have something that shocks you into awareness of the flow of time. Perhaps your commute home from work flummoxes you. Wasn’t it mere minutes ago that you were commuting to work? Maybe it’s your class schedule that runs through its week before you process on Friday that Monday transpired. Perhaps it’s your child’s weekend sporting match that pops up as quickly as my pill box empties. Suddenly, and too soon, you’re back on the sidelines cheering. Hadn’t you just been there a couple of days ago?

Time is a forward progression — a plod or a sprint — until one day it’s withered away. The recognition of this might be an avalanche on the psyche. Or it might be the obvious conclusion to the story we just lived firsthand. Maybe having logged enough things into memory is what separates the obvious conclusion from the avalanche. If we paid attention, which is what memory needs to exist, then we’ll have that first-hand story to refer to when the pill boxes of our lives empty. It’ll feel like we lived through something — high school, college, a lengthy career, parenthood, a long project, time spent living in a place, and life itself.

I like the sound of that story. It has a beginning, middle, and end. It makes sense. It was noticed. And above all, it was appreciated, valued, and there is gratitude.

Anyway, gotta go. I have some pill boxes I need to refill.

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Have a lovely rest of your week, friends.