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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
There’s a line in the movie On Golden Pond by Henry Fonda at his 80th birthday party, something along the lines of “never expected it to get here so fast”.
I saw that movie when I was 18, and I didn’t understand that one. Now that I’m 56, I do.
My father just died at 88 1/2, he was 26 years older than me. I am 26 years older than my oldest son. I am, however, much closer to my father’s age than I am to my son’s. Fascinating.
No you don’t.