TIME APPEARS TO PASS QUICKER THE LONGER THAT WE ARE ALIVE
I’m definitely not the only person who says that the passage of time seemingly becomes quicker as we progress through our lifetime. Many say that life is too short, and that age creeps up on us all. In my day-to-day life a lot of people are surprised when I tell them that their childhood and/or their teenage years really were decades (and not just a couple of years) ago.
Whenever I have done media interviews and public talks, I have frequently been asked about whether my inability to forget the vast majority of my life experiences affects my perspective on time.
The truth of the matter is that my perspective of the passage of time is hardly any different to what the vast majority of humankind expresses. I do indeed find that life progressively passes by quicker with age. However some people are surprised when I give my own personal opinion as to why this is the case for me.
You see, when I was a toddler a year seemed like a very, very long time. But it only seemed that way because for a two year old a year is half of their entire length of existence. At that age, two years is the longest length of time known to them. Though as a child gradually becomes older, the percentage of what a year is of their entire lifetime decreases less and less simultaneously. So this means that eventually we view a year as being a shorter stretch of time. Perhaps we could even say that an eight year old’s viewpoint of a year is half the time of what a four year old perceives that same stretch of time to be! Maybe we could half that again for a sixteen year old as well!
Personally I’ve found that the passage of decades affect us in the exact same way; and it’s my strong belief that this is why people in their thirties, forties, fifties and so forth experience initial shock when they hear that their teenage years were 20+ years ago! If we use the “percentage of a lifetime” calculation again, perhaps a decade to a thirty year old feels the same as what five years does for a fifteen year old. This could explain why a significant number of people in their thirties (or older) at first mistakenly feel like they were teenagers only a few short years ago!!
As well, things like technology, colloquial language, social issues, trends, current affairs and political correctness change on a yearly (or even half yearly) basis. This could perhaps be the reason for why those are the most difficult things for adults to keep up to date with, and are the areas where generation gaps do show a lot more significantly.
Many a time I also find that time seems to additionally pass by quicker whenever we don’t want it to do so. To begin with we do experience this sensation as we gradually progress through our lifetime and don’t want to grow old, or die. Yet I also experience this whenever I don’t want a holiday or another enjoyable event to end. I must too say that when the end actually does come on those occasions, I begin to feel like I’ve had enough of the celebration/enjoyment, and finally do decide that I’m ready to move on. So hopefully I will experience that same feeling and thought process when I’m at the very end of my lifetime as well.
To end this blog, I’ll conclude by saying that the passage of time does appear to change its speed, depending upon our own personal perspective. But even so, unlike scientific relativity (which can change the passage of time) our mere thoughts don’t physically make our lives progress more quickly. Our own personal feelings don’t literally change time in a way which is the same as if we were travelling at light speed. However it should be added that the truth of the matter is that a human life is not eternal, and that it’s essential for each and every one of us to make the most of it!!