Growing older means watching your definition of “a long time” become shorter.

A year is enormous at ten and unremarkable at fifty. The same interval that once contained an entire era now passes as a season, partly because it is a smaller share of what you have lived and partly because routine compresses time. The effect is that things you planned to get to eventually keep arriving on the wrong side of the calendar.

Since the sense of available time is unreliable, use dates instead. If something matters, put it somewhere specific rather than in the general future. The trip, the conversation, the visit to someone getting older. Eventually is not a point in time, and it is where most intentions quietly go.