When Father Time Becomes Your Authorized Watch Dealer

At sixty-five, with retirement approaching, I have aged out of five-thousand-dollar watches.

Not because I can’t appreciate them.

Not because they aren’t beautiful.

Because I no longer have the wrist time.

Twenty more years—if fortune is generous—is not enough to justify rotating my current collection alongside two additional grail pieces that would spend most of their lives quietly aging in a watch box. I call this Chronological Misalignment: the condition in which a person’s remaining lifetime no longer justifies acquiring possessions intended to be enjoyed over a much longer horizon.

Time eventually becomes the harshest accountant.

But time is only half the problem.

The other half is geography.

Or, more accurately, lifestyle.

I still admire the Grand Seiko GMT. I still admire the Tudor Pelagos. They remain magnificent objects.

I simply struggle to imagine wearing one while binge-watching Hulu, pushing a shopping cart through Target, or taking my daughters to YogurtLand for frozen yogurt.

The watch would be dressed for an expedition to Antarctica.

I would be buying gummy bears by the ounce.

The mismatch is almost comic.

I call this Environmental Misalignment: the condition in which one owns or desires objects whose elegance exceeds the ordinary circumstances of one’s daily life.

Recognizing these two forms of misalignment is not depressing.

It is liberating.

Reality has performed the difficult task of setting my priorities for me.

The question is no longer whether I can justify another grail watch.

The question is what deserves that energy instead.

For decades, watches occupied an astonishing amount of mental real estate. They required research, comparison, speculation, buying, selling, photographing, discussing, and occasionally irrational justification.

Now that enthusiasm has become available for reassignment.

It belongs elsewhere.

It belongs in writing.

It belongs at the piano.

It belongs in my kettlebell-filled garage.

Most of all, it belongs to my health.

I am still about twenty pounds overweight.

My physician periodically reminds me that it is time for fasting bloodwork—cholesterol, blood sugar, and the rest of the annual report card. I already know roughly what the results will say. At 230 pounds, everything will probably look respectable except my LDL cholesterol, which has an annoying habit of hovering around the borderline.

So the mission is obvious.

Reach 210 pounds.

Then endure the ritual: skip breakfast, forgo the morning coffee, wait patiently while someone extracts several vials of blood, drive home slightly lightheaded, and receive laboratory numbers worthy of the inconvenience.

At thirty-five, my grail was a Tudor Pelagos.

At sixty-five, my grail is different. It’s a total cholesterol below 200 and a blood pressure reading of 120 over 80.

That is not surrender.

That is maturity.

There comes a point in life when we stop negotiating with Father Time.

He begins issuing instructions.

He says:

“You’re not wearing a Grand Seiko to Trader Joe’s.

You’re not timing your afternoon nap with a luxury GMT.

Your assignment now is different.

Become as healthy as possible.

Remain mentally sharp.

Write your books.

Play your piano.

Stay strong enough that your family never has to carry you through the final chapters of your life.”

For once, I find myself with no desire to argue.

His orders make perfect sense.

The remarkable thing is that they do not diminish my life.

They simplify it.

The pursuit of watches has quietly given way to the pursuit of longevity, creativity, and strength. Those ambitions promise far greater returns than another polished titanium case ever could.

I wrote this little manifesto wearing a G-Shock Frogman.

It told time just as faithfully as any luxury watch.

More importantly, it reminded me that I have finally found a grail worthy of the time I have left.