A few days a go, I was again on the topic of time. That particular entry discussed Planck time and got a little complicated…. so today I thought we’d tackle the old question, does time really go faster as we get older. Most of us, at one time or another, have said that time seems to go by faster the older we get — so does it really?
Like so many things, I obviously don’t know the answer to this question, but it may just be a matter of perspective. When you think about it, one year to a five-year old is a significant portion of their lifetime to date, but to an 80 year old, it’s just a tiny fraction.
People more knowledgeable than me on the subject say it has more to do with how, the older we get, the more familiar life becomes, and the more we “chunk” our experiences into basic categories like work, shopping, commuting, etc. A study found that prompting people to categorize the previous year in that way led them to feel that it had passed more quickly. On the other hand, being mindful and savoring each experience as if it were new tended to trigger the sensation of time passing more slowly.
So maybe time is what you make of it — I’ve heard it said that those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
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