Sorry, I can’t search. If this one’s been done, someone please post a link.
Everyone knows that our experience of the passage of time “speeds up” as we age. An hour to a 5 year old is an eternity, but by the time he reaches retirement, weeks seem to “fly by”.
Why should that be?
I’ve heard a few theories, and the only one that seems even plausible is that our brain creates the mental equivalent of “templates” for common experiences so they require less processing power, so to speak, and it’s this reduction in required processing resources that creates the effect.
But it would seem to me that these templates would be pretty much complete by adulthood or late adolescence. Yet clearly, my experience of time now is very much “faster” than it was when I graduated high school.
Have studies been done? Is there any anecdotal evidence from, say, brain surgeries or persons with brain injuries who have had a suddenly altered experience of temporal velocity?
I think it’s more that adults are busier. Whereas kids have summer breaks, vacations, and the like to look forward to, adults do not. Our weeks seem to slip by quicker because we’re not as focused on the passage of time (“Only two more weeks 'til Spring Break!”) When you’re anticipating someting, time seems longer-- when you have nothing to anticipate, you just don’t notice.
We have more monotony as adults. Looking back, time seems to have flown because our days are pretty much all the same and don’t stick out in our minds.
I heard it explained once as time being relative to a persons overall time experiance.
By example, a 4yo has lived 1,460 days were as a 40yo has lived 14,600. Therefore, a day is 1/1460th of the childs total life experiance, assuming even then any time was registered as a newborn, where an adult has only 1/14600th of his time invested in his day. A year to a 4yo is 25% of his life. That’s like 10 years to the 40yo.
That is why some say “Timeout” for children should be based on their age and not on what seems like a long time to an adult.
All I can do is support your curiosity on the issue and to offer my own guesses as to why it seems to be true.
I recall summertime taking forever to pass when I was young. I attribute that to its newness and to the fact that I had nothing better to do than to allow those lazy days to take their time passing. As I have aged the memories of summers past have formed the “template” you describe and things don’t take nearly as long to happen as they did before, or, better said, the amount of time involved seems/feels to be much less.
Similar sensations apply to distances and sizes of places. It’s rarely the case that a return visit to somewhere I know from long ago doesn’t wind up being a disappointment in terms of how small and skimpy it seems through older eyes.
It’s also like the experience of driving to a new place. Once you have made that trip, any new trip to that same place will seem to take less time – unless you happen to be walking or taking slower transportation.
At 17, I can say this: It seems to me that when you’re young your days are coloured. You do stuff, you go to school, you advance through grades and celebrate birthdays. Does anyone actually care how old you are after you turn 21? I know I don’t. Your life is like a robot: you spend your first years in input mode and the rest in output. First you learn and all paths are open to you, then you choose a career and spend the rest of your life pouring out what you have learned. At first this is just another new experience and then you realise it’s going to last forever. It’s like when you put on a glove, at first you feel it and then you don’t.
Sorry for the general incoherence of this post. I appear to have been struck by the strange aphasia that occurs when I try to speak about abstract concepts.
How about your perception of age as you age? I remember quite clearly being a small child in line at Micky D’s and thinking that the counterpeople were way old. I looked at the teenagers in the same manner as adults.
I remember being 18 (dope fiend/alkie - recovered now, thanks!) and being certain I wouldn’t live to 30. At 18 it seemed like 30 was old. Now, at 40, while I still think I’m old, I look at my Dad who’s 72 thinking “he’s not that old”.
Time perception definitely changes throughout life. There’s a good psychological study here. I’d be interested in the why. I always associated it with metabolism of some sort.
I especially like the part of your post "…Now, at 40, while I still think I’m old, I look at my Dad who’s 72 thinking “he’s not that old”.
I can’t place how long ago I came to suspect that pretty much all people “freeze” their self-concept at some age. For some it’s younger and for others older, but I suspect it’s somewhere in late teens and early-20’s. From then on, it’s just the body responding to the aging process, while the mind/spirit remains more-or-less stuck in the “glory years.”
As soon as I had that thought I began quizzing older people to try to see if my observation had any merit. I’m now convinced it does. That’s why oldsters still spend time in beauty parlors and barber shops, and why they still try to act young, even when it’s hard to move around as well as they used to. (Mick Jagger at the Super Bowl halftime a notable exception.)
I can attest to the Peter Pan complex in my own case. One of my favorite expressions is “I used to grow up at such-and-such a place.”
I think Peter Pan syndrome probably plays a good part of it – perhaps more for some than others. I’m 34. I still feel like I’m in my early 20s or even late teens. I still love playing video games. I still watch cartoons occasionally. (The classics, mind you; I’ve little taste for the modern ones save for the “adult” toons like Simpsons and Family Guy) I feel older. I look older (or is that just chubbier? Damn metabolism.) I’d like to think I’ve grown wiser and perhaps a little more intelligent – certainly my sphere of knowledge and experience has expanded. But I still think of myself as young.
I think a lot of us do. Consider this: How many commercials have you seen for modern kid’s toys and thought to yourself, “How cool would that have been if we had that when I was a kid?” What you’re really saying is “Holy crap that is so cool – but I’m too old to have any hope of being able to play with it while leaving my dignity intact.”
I’ll bet we all have that. It’s just a matter of how much of it we buried in our efforts to be taken seriously as adults.
I share this explanation, but it’s not just the time that has passed. It also has to do with the time remaining. As one ages, one’s mortality becomes much more apparent. When you’re young, there is a feeling of invulnerability and dying is so far away it’s irrelevant. As you age and realize that there are fewer and fewer years left, the time just seems to pass that much quicker. That and the fact that a year is not marked by the same old milestones when you were younger. As a kid, the year revolves around summer vacation, start of school, major holidays (Christmas, Easter, etc.), and birthdays, all of which were essentially out of your control. When you’re older, you control your own calendar and can make your own milestones.
How often are we encouraged to see things through the eyes of a child? How frequently does a movie, song, story, whatever, strike that little child in us and make us feel, not just wish, that we had that innocence once again?
Not too long ago (it may still be active) there was a thread asking which songs make us cry. One I failed to mention because the grown-up in me knew it to be silly to say so is “When You Wish Upon A Star.” Another from that same era is something like “A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes.”
At least I had the balls to mention “Over The Rainbow.”
I’m 69 and I still can notice that when I spend two weeks in a really different place, times slows down enormously. But when I am home or even away visiting my kids, same old, same old and time passes quickly. I am about to go on my sixth annual two week trip to Barbados and, much as I enjoy (and the people there, the ordinary natives, are wonderful), I know it will pass much more quickly than the first time. All too quickly.
I have another version of this. I have felt for many years (I’m 62 now) that I’ve been moving away from a brick wall. When I was younger, all I could see of it was the bricks and the pebbly surface of them, and the few lines between them. I didn’t even realize it was a wall. Maybe when I was very young, and my nose was up against it, I could only perceive one brick, if even that. As I’ve aged, I’ve begun to notice patterns in the bricks, larger and larger patterns. In fact, some of the individual bricks are hardly discernable any more. Oh, if I squint, I can make them out, but they’re not so interesting, I’ve seen them for so long and seen so many of them that they don’t hold my interest. On the other hand, some of these much larger patterns are now coming into view and I see things I didn’t even know existed before. Shapes and colors and dimensions of things are making sense that I didn’t even perceive, let alone understand before. I see huge patterns - patterns made of patterns. And among those things, time takes on a different meaning. Its scope has evolved. As a tiny example, I don’t measure time in increments that occur between my birthdays. I hardly know when my birthday is. Of course I know the date. It’s etched in. But I certainly have to stop to figure out how old my children are when someone asks me. And I definitely remember when I was 9 and then when I was 9 1/2. And I often lose track of how old I am. So somehow, things change as you age, including time. Your whole perspective changes. And, yes, things that took up 1/5 of your life when you were five, like a year, now take up 1/60. Try holding your breath for one minute. Try holding it for twelve minutes. When you were five, you were just beginning to perceive that there were four seasons that repeated. Now, the seasons come and go, come and go. Whoo. I’m sounding like Grandpa Simpson. Except not so lucid. xo, C.
Fuck dignity-- fuck it right in the ear. If I want a toy, I buy it. That’s the cool thing about being a grown-up: I can buy toys any time I want to and stay up all night playing with them.
I’ll not be too old to play until I’m pushing up daisies.
They always say that youth is wasted on the young, and I have to agree. Kids spend too much time wanting to hurry up and be adults, then when they have the freedom to have fun, they’re too concious of their adult status to do it. Not me, buddy. I’m playing in mud puddles and building snowmen. I’m watching cartoons and reading 'till four AM.
Part of the reason people are so stressed and feel helpless watching time go by is that they’re not taking time to enjoy life and have a little fun.
Do you honestly think that at 21, you’ve pretty much learned everything you need to know in life and have experienced everything you will ever experience? Between 21 and 31, I had gone to business school, changed careers once, changed jobs like six times (not counting about a dozen temp jobs and other BS work), lived in two different major cities and traveled to a couple of dozen places in several different countries for both work and recreation. In other words I’ve done a hell of a lot more between 21 and 31 than I did between 11 and 21.
Young people generally lack perspective. They generally live in a world where there is a 4 year difference between their oldest and youngest peers. Anyone older than that is in the same nebulous “adult” world as their teachers and parents. High school kids for example live in a world where “college guys/chicks” are the epitome of maturity and coolness.
Part of the reason people are so stressed and feel helpless watching time go by is that they get a sense that they are running out of time to do or accomplish the things they want to do. You need to strike a balance between having fun and being serious so you can move forward in life to what will hopefully be bigger and better things. It’s like a high school or college kid who says “screw it! I’m going to just party all the time!!” There will come a time where everyone else will pass him by and he’ll have no one to party with. Meenwhile, those other kids are going to bigger and better parties in college or at their share in the Hampton’s as an adult.
Sure-- I still have to do the “grown up” stuff, like go to work and scrub the toilet, however, I’ll let the dishes sit in the sink sometimes if a new book has arrived. I figure the president probably won’t be dropping by.
My mother is a neat-freak. She works full-time, is raising her granddaughter, and is really stressed. I try to tell her that it’s because she won’t take a break to enjoy life. So what if there’s clutter or dust? It’ll be there tomorrow-- tonight, why not sit down and build a pillow fort with the grandkid?
That’s the kind of fun I’m talking about. Yes, we all have responsibilities, but I think it’s a matter of priortization. I take recreation very seriously-- the way I see it, I work so I can buy fun stuff. Yes, we save and plan for the future, but life’s too short to save up all fun for “later.”
