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On the Perception of the Passing of Time as We Age
As a kid I recall adults – my parents, my grandparents, others – every now and then talk and complain about how time flies by or some similar sentiment. When they made these statements and complaints, they weren’t talking about how quickly their workday went by or how rapidly tonight’s dinner party came and went. Instead, the context of these statements generally referred to longer time frames – how quickly the last week or the last month or six months flew by.
At the time, I didn’t really understand what they were talking about and I figured it was just something adults said. And, although it is something adults say, there is a certain truth to it. I’m in my sixties now, and I understand what those adults were talking about. I’ve understood it for a while now – I don’t know when I first experienced this phenomenon – I imagine I was around 30 years of age. As far as I know, this is a common occurrence – at some point in time most of us (all of us?) experience this perception of the speeding up of time as we age.
Of course, time doesn’t actually speed up as we age. The passing of one minute, one hour, or one day is the same for a 16-year-old as for a 60-year-old, and each would agree on the amount of time elapsed. However, after the passing of some amount of time, the time will seem to have elapsed quicker to the 60-year-old than to the 16-year-old. I don’t know why that is. I never studied psychology, neuroscience, or any discipline that might touch upon the subject. That, however, hasn’t deterred me from hypothesizing on why this is so. I have two theories about this which I wish to present and see what others may think.
Theory #1: This theory is based on the differences in life experiences of children versus their elders. There are two aspects to this theory. First is the fact that as children we learn and experience new things every day and we are aware that many of these experiences are necessary hurdles on the road to adulthood and so greatly matter. Of course, people don’t stop learning things or having new experiences (including those that greatly matter) once they become adults and that leads to the second aspect of this theory which is the emotional nature of childhood. Experiences and feelings are much more intense when we are young and thus mean more and stay with us longer. Therefore, experiences which in adulthood will be viewed as the normal ebb and flow of life take on an urgent and catastrophic nature in childhood. I suppose this is somewhat similar in a much, much subtler fashion to the slowing down of things one experiences in a sudden potential life-threatening event such as a serious car crash.
Well, that’s Theory #1 and if you don’t like it, I’ve got another one for ya.
Theory #2: I gave this one a name – The Apparent Compression of Memory Theory. It works thusly. Let us say that Bob has just completed his first month as a 16-year-old. He now has another month of memories to be stored wherever memories get stored. This new month of memories is just one out of the now 193 months of memories Bob has accumulated. Moving forward and nearly doubling Bob’s age, Bob has now just come to the end of his first month as a 32-year-old and has another month of memories for storage. This new batch of memories is now only one out of 385. At age 64 and one month, Bob has another new month of memories which are only one out of 769. Every day we age, our new memories are an increasingly smaller percentage of our entire history and thus appear to be less than they actually are. If they appear less to us it must also mean that the time elapsed will also seem less to us. Exacerbating this phenomenon is the fact that there are many early memories which stay with us as we age which should also tend to “compress” our present experiencing of time. This second theory also requires that as we age this perception of time passing quicker must also continue to grow. Is that the case? I don’t know.
Well, if you’ve read along you’ve probably figured out that I don’t really know what I’m talking about. You’re probably right; but, those are my theories and I am sticking to them for now. However, perhaps you’re in a field in which you’ve studied this subject, or you’re also an old coot who has theories about this. In either case, I’d love to hear what you think.
Published in General
The days go slow, but the years go fast.
The theory I subscribe to w/regard to time speeding up as you get older is that there are fewer discrete events to measure against. When you’re a kid, the year is split up into school year and summer vacation. Even in college the class years are very distinct, and you still have long breaks in the summer.
Then you hit the working world, and now the year becomes one long event, with maybe a few weeks of vacation here and there. The rhythm changes. When I was a kid a single school year lasted forever. Now as my kids go through school they’re really fast.
An interesting test might be to see if there is some what to measure whether teachers have identical experience of time compression, or if there’s a marginal difference between them and people who don’t get summers off (or at least get to do something “different” with their summers.)
Your theory is well-thought out and just may be right AltarGirl. Thanks
Thanks MWM. I agree with a portion of your theory – namely, the idea that as adults our lives tend toward the indistinguishable, especially as compared to when we’re young. However, I don’t think tying it to the school year works in a universal sense. The modern school system is a relatively new thing. The pace of the school system was originally based on the farming calendar though, which was the way most people, young and old, experienced life for centuries. I assume this perceived speeding up of time as we age has been universal over time regardless of work and life calendars and ways of living. I don’t know if that’s so; but perhaps, someone who has studied the literature from earlier more rural eras would know if this concept was discussed at the time.
Is that really true though?
Arent the most labor-intensive times for agriculture in the spring (planting) and fall(harvesting), not in the summer?
You got me MWM. That’s what I’ve read, but I’m a city boy and so really don’t know.
Depends on what kind of farm. If it’s a dairy farm, the labor-intensive times are every day, twice a day (if I remember right). My wife’s maternal side of the family grew up on a farm and her uncle still runs it. There is the planting and harvesting, and he has some livestock so downtime is mostly in winter.
On the subject of aging, I may be running into a mid-life crisis. I started Tae Kwon Do classes concurrently with my daughter and must say it’s aging my knees quite well and quick. Or strengthening them? Not sure yet. Cheaper than a sports car, though.
My sister often remarks her “brain is full” when it comes to forgetting things. This seems to run along the same lines as The Apparent Compression of Memory Theory, so I’ll support it.
Can I be the first to mention that you only appear to be 78?
My mom grew up on a dairy farm. Yes, it never ends. Cows need to be milked whether you want to or not.
There was a great story in the Milwaukee Journal probably 20 years ago, I wish I could find it online. Dairy farmer from somewhere in Central Wisconsin who had never travelled anywhere – had only spent one night away from home in his adult life, attending a wedding in Appleton, if memory serves.
Anyway, when he and his wife were in their 60’s, the kids made arrangements to cover the farm so that they could take a trip – driving to the west coast, by themselves. The kids arranged for motels all along the way, mostly within site of the interstate.
This guy was in his 60s and had never seen or used an escalator! I’ll have to search some more and see if I can find the article.
well played. smart move.
For me, memory works best when it’s got cross-references. I remember a time, a weekend when I just turned twelve, and we boy scouts struggled to put up tents and set up camp on a sunny but windy and cold April day. It was a great time; the World’s Fair, two miles away, was about to open. New York City–clean-shining, modern–was the envy of that world. The Beatles had just been on Ed Sullivan and they were coming back. The popular culture was as healthy as it would ever be. Broadway was full of big hits–“Fiddler on the Roof”, “Funny Girl”, “A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum”.
In school, my class had just been assigned “1984”, which starts on April 4, 1984, so I was thinking about that opening on April 4, 1964. There’s a semi-sorta-implied sex scene. I was thinking of that, too.
Recently, thanks to the internet, I was able to look up weather reports of that day, issued from Fort Totten, New York, whose weather station was only about a quarter mile from our wind-plagued campsite. It said something like “Temperature 45 degrees, with wind gusts 20-30 miles per hour”.
It was strange to have access to exact confirmation of small details of a distant memory.
My wife made me shave my moustashe off last weekend. She says it makes me look younger. About 2 months younger, I suspect. My photo in the Avatar is from 1981 so is a bit misleading. A more recent photo.
At my mother’s 100th birthday party.
Welcome to the club!
Looks like you come from good genes.
Purchase the extra-strong, four-rolls-in-one brand: They last longer with fewer break-thrus.
Of course, still, at the end…
Is it not possible that for us older folks, the experts might not only arrive at a cure for old age, but actually be able to reverse it?
Forgetting which comic stated the obvious: “Death is not a bug in the system, it’s a feature.”
If I could go back to one or two chosen moments in my younger life, I would be so willing to do that. But if someone said, “Here, take this pill and you can re-live age 19 to 23, I would decline it. I’m not willing to have my heart broken again, or be in suspense over career plot points that now seem meaningless and all the rest that went with that age span.
Acne? No thanks.
I like #2. Each unit of time is a smaller proportion of the whole and, so, less significant. When I was in my early 40s, I had a colleague who was turning 30 and doing the usual moaning and groaning about aging. So I took the reciprocal of every number between one and 80 and added them together, each one being the proportion that one year of life bore to the totality of an 80 year life at that point in time, to provide a measure of the subjective duration of an entire 80 year lifespan. Then I did the same for years one to 30 and created a chart showing the cumulative subjective percentage of life that had passed at each age. Sure enough, by that measure, at 30 years of age, over 80% of her life had already elapsed, proving that she was, in fact, ancient. Of course, over 20% of her life was gone by her first birthday. Flawed, but no more complaints about being old. I am not a good person to complain to.
Just give me joints that work.
BR 549.
I remember reading once, somewhere, that the reason times seems to move so fast when we are older is because our mind, mental processes, bio-processes are in fact moving much slower than when we were younger. So, while the passing of time remains constant it is experienced as moving faster. Shorter version: time is not faster, we are just slower.
Maybe. Thanks TempTime.
I think that it passes at the same rate for older people. It’s only in retrospect that it seems to have gone by faster.
It’s #2, I’ve concluded. My daughter is almost 18, and due to go to Brazil for 10 months around August. A gap year before college – no visits home, no parental trips allowed. For her, there’s plenty of time; it’s way, way out there. For me, it’s almost imminent loss, because I know how swift the time will seem to go, and how everything will change for the worse. It’s the first time in my life I’ve dreaded spring. Daughter, on the other hand, can’t wait for it, and it’s at least three weeks away. Gawd, an eternity.
I think both are correct. When I explain to our ten-year-old daughter the I have known, say, Doug and Nora (two family friends) for over 30 years, she has no practical idea what means. She can appreciate it intellectually, but that number is three times longer than she has lived to date. She doesn’t really get what it means, but she is starting to catch on, thanks in part to one of those milestones mentioned under option 1 above: She moves from Grundschule to Gymnasium or Realschule this year. The primary/elementary/Grundschule phase of her life is coming to a end in just four months and four months…that time slice she understands.
Also, it seems quite important to keep seeking new experiences as one ages, as the act of gaining new experiences has salubrious effects on body and mind. Stagnation kills.
The fact that we’re aware that we have less of it ahead of us than behind when we reach that point, that plays a role. I may have this year…my family tends to be long-lived, but even assuming I live my earthly life another 40 or even 50 years, I’ve hit at most the break-even point. More likely, there are more days behind me than in front of me, and that does change one’s perception of time.
Thanks Hartmann von Aue. You and several others have mentioned that our mortality plays a role in this phenomenon. YAKNOW whenever I’ve thought about this topic, and when I wrote the post, I don’t think I ever gave that any consideration. You may be right.
Only the exchange: Kimberly
Yup. I’ve long believed this is the likely explanation. Came up with it myself years ago, as many undoubtedly have. Just a function of a ratio.
I’m well aware of this phenomenon. I seem to find myself saying I did or read something just recently, or just the other day. And then I have to stop and explain that that could be any time in the last 6-12 months.
The corollary to this is that other people seem to be getting younger. When did all doctors become 25 years old? The last time I was at my grandkids’ school I could swear they are letting 2-year olds into kindergarten.
If you think it’s fast at 60–it’s a lot like being in a speeding car: it’s really a lot faster as you near 80. As for theories–I like the one popular back in the day and taken I think from FUTURE SHOCK. The “are we there yet?” from the mouths of babes and heard as annoying by parent or grandparent is based on the time-frame under consideration as experienced by kid and adult. The 1 hour car-ride when compared the totality of sentient life experienced thus far by the kid is a palpable fraction. That same 1 hour car-ride compared to the totality of sentient life experienced thus far by the annoyed adult is but a blink and not even a rounding error. Knowing that, I still got annoyed.