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Why time seems to pass faster as we age

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Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#71

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

jvanderbot wrote: post #17

I've been journalling for 10+ years. In addition to forcing me to actually write down what happened that day, reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich. I can review my now-wife's rocky courtship and feel grateful we made it. I looked back 3 years ago and found the day our children were conceived :D (we have twins). I can review the anxieties of my PhD years, etc…

> reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich.

I don't disagree. But I think the flavor of the richness depends on the quality of the days. It is my experience that decades can also be built from days that ought not be preserved.

Or at least not without strong curation and editorial treatments.

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#73

Post by 1234letshaveatw »

dougmwne wrote: post #51

I’ve learned that the passage of time is extremely relative. My college years were extremely full of new experiences and they feel like ages. Once I started working, my life was very rote and consisted mainly of driving from home to work and back again. I worked a lot of hours and vacations and weekend trips were infrequent. Time flew by. Then I ditched settled life and started traveling year round with a couple of b…

I'm sure from their perspective you are the one that stood still lol

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#75

Post by TeMPOraL »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #71
jvanderbot wrote: post #17

I've been journalling for 10+ years. In addition to forcing me to actually write down what happened that day, reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich. I can review my now-wife's rocky courtship and feel grateful we made it. I looked back 3 years ago and found the day our children were conceived :D (we have twins). I can review the anxieties of my PhD years, etc…

> reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and so rich. I don't disagree. But I think the flavor of the richness depends on the quality of the days. It is my experience that decades can also be built from days that ought not be preserved. Or at least not without strong curation and editorial treatments.

I have semi-regular journal notes going back over a decade, and my experience was opposite to GP - instead of discovering how many things happened in that time, I discovered my mind has been spinning in circles, trying to find solutions to the same problems, and despite feeling otherwise day-to-day, no actual progress has been made. It was an important discovery for me, though not much came of it anyway.

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#76

Post by olav »

I wonder if the way the author describes it, ie. new memories are just diffs against older experiences, is scientifically grounded.

I came up with another explanation: My thought processes have slowed, so the world has sped up, relative to myself.

Is there scientific evidence for either explanation?

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#77

Post by standardUser »

I try to balance my life between new and exciting experiences and more routine and mundane experiences. The routine and mundane are important. They are how I maintain my important relationships and pay the bills. But when it all becomes routine, time will fly by regardless of age (at least for adults). But my sense of time reliably slows to a crawl if I have enough new stimulus. And the older I have gotten (40's currently) the more I have gone out of my way to purposefully generate experiences that slows things down.

I lived abroad for 2 months a few years back and it felt like 6 months. I moved states not long after and once again, massive slowdown. That first year in a new city felt like three. New relationships can do the same thing. As can new jobs or, even more so, a career change. And let's not forget drugs.

But those are all things a person can completely avoid if they don't make a conscious effort not to. My default for many years was to sit snuggly at a boring job, travel only intermittently and otherwise immerse myself in repetitive media. I refer to those as the lost years (mid-to-late 20's).

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#78

Post by dougmwne »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #73
dougmwne wrote: post #51

I’ve learned that the passage of time is extremely relative. My college years were extremely full of new experiences and they feel like ages. Once I started working, my life was very rote and consisted mainly of driving from home to work and back again. I worked a lot of hours and vacations and weekend trips were infrequent. Time flew by. Then I ditched settled life and started traveling year round with a couple of b…

I'm sure from their perspective you are the one that stood still lol

They are probably thinking that life starts to pass by fast and wondering where the last 10 years went.

I had some friends living interesting lives when I was settled. Sailing the globe, doing seasonal work in the arctic and backcountry skiing mountains with no name. Doing field work in the African bush. I kept thinking about them and wondering how I could be them, like the little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop tonguing it.

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#79

Post by tacone »

I have a memory from my childhood that still makes me smile.

At six years old I have been told that old people tend do sleep less.

So I went to my father and asked: "Daddy, why do old people sleep so little?"

He looked at me and said: "Because in a way they always sleep".

Re: Why time seems to pass faster as we age

#80

Post by gnatman »

"My grandfather used to say: 'Life is astonishingly short. As I look back over it, life seems so foreshortened to me that I can hardly understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that, quite apart from accidents, even the span of a normal life that passes happily may be totally insufficient for such a ride.'"

- Franz Kafka, The Next Village

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