Under Grumpa's Hat

Every now and then I hear it. Tic-toc, tic-toc. It’s not the wall clock, it’s the one in my head. The one that seems to echo louder each year as the grey hairs multiply while my forehead and the bald spot on the back of my head are rushing to meet like teenagers at the high school dance.

You hear it too, don’t you? Maybe not in the same way, but it shows up. Trust me, it gets louder as you get older. For some, the tic-toc is the creak in the knees when they bend down to tie a shoelace. For others, it’s squinting at the fine print on a menu and realizing their arms aren’t long enough to push the text into focus. For me, it’s the subtle reminders of time not slowing down.

The tic-toc gets louder when I spend too much time worrying about things that don’t matter. Like the news cycle that convinces me the sky is always falling. Or the latest diet trend promising eternal youth, which sounds convincing until I see the price of kale, and the taste making me feel like I’m eating the jungle’s underlay. Tic-toc.

But here’s the funny thing: time itself doesn’t speed up. It’s our lifestyle that cranks up the volume. We rush, we stress, we chase things we can’t take with us. It’s like running on a treadmill set to “panic mode.” You’re sweating buckets but going nowhere fast, with the soundtrack of tic-toc in the background.

When we moved to Costa Rica, that ticking sound started to fade. Not because I stopped aging, but because I started living. Pura Vida, they call it. It’s not just a slogan on t-shirts sold at the airport. It’s a way of approaching life where the clock still ticks, but you care a lot less about it.

Here, mornings start with birds that sound like they’re auditioning for a jungle symphony, not a phone alarm screeching like an angry parrot. Coffee isn’t guzzled while checking emails but sipped slowly while watching the mist roll over the mountains. Neighbours don’t rush past you on their way to somewhere “important,” they stop, chat, and maybe hand you a mango or freshly cut cilantro. Tic… and then a pause… and then toc. Time breathes differently here.

The moral? You cannot stop the clock. None of us can. But you can turn down its volume by changing how you live. Instead of running laps on panic mode, step outside, laugh at yourself more, and quit treating every day like a job interview with time as the boss.

Age will still come. The laugh lines will deepen, the knees will protest, and the hair dye companies will continue making a fortune (or not). But when you embrace living instead of just existing, the tic-toc doesn’t sound like a countdown anymore. It sounds like a rhythm. A beat you can actually dance to.

So yes, you cannot stop time. But you can slow it down with the choices you make. And trust me, life tastes a lot sweeter when you let it breathe at the pace of Pura Vida.