Why does it feel as if time flies faster as we age?…

 

There is something strange about getting older. When we were children, a summer vacation seemed to last forever. Christmas could not come soon enough, and a birthday seemed impossibly far away. Now, somehow, an entire year can disappear before we have had time to figure out where it went. One minute it is January, and suddenly we are looking at another December on the calendar and wondering how the year passed so quickly.

I have often thought about why this happens. The clock has not changed. There are still 24 hours in every day, just as there were when we were young. Yet our perception of time certainly changes as we grow older.

One reason is that when we are young, so much of life is new. We are constantly learning, experiencing, and discovering things for the first time. Our first day of school, our first airplane ride, our first job, getting married, having children, and moving into our first home all create strong memories. Because there are so many new experiences, our brains have a great deal to remember. Looking back, those periods of our lives can seem much longer because they are filled with distinct memories.

As we get older, our days can become more predictable. We wake up, have breakfast, run errands, prepare meals, check our email, watch television, read, visit with friends, and go to bed. Then we do much of the same thing the next day. There is certainly nothing wrong with having a comfortable routine, but our brains do not necessarily treat each similar day as a separate, memorable event.

That may be one reason a month can seem to disappear so quickly. When we look back, there may be very few individual memories separating one week from another.

There is also a mathematical way of looking at it. When you are five years old, one year represents 20 percent of your entire life. When you are 20, a year represents only 5 percent of your life. At 50, it is 2 percent, and at 78, it is a much smaller fraction of the life you have already experienced. Each additional year can therefore feel shorter when compared with everything that came before it.

I also think that retirement changes our perception of time. When we are working, school schedules, deadlines, appointments, and vacations give the year structure. There are always things we are waiting for or working toward. After retirement, those markers may become less frequent. Days can blend unless we make an effort to give them some distinction.

For those of us who travel, this can be especially interesting. A week spent in a completely new place can feel much longer than a week spent at home. New sights, different foods, unfamiliar roads and unexpected experiences give our brains plenty of information to process. Years later, we may remember that particular week in great detail.

Perhaps that is one of the best reasons to keep trying new things as we get older. We do not have to make every day an adventure, but occasionally stepping outside our normal routine can create memories that make life feel richer and, in retrospect, longer.

I have come to believe that the answer is not really that time speeds up as we age. The clock continues at the same pace. It is our perception of time that changes.

Maybe that is why we should not spend too much time worrying about how quickly the years seem to pass. Instead, we can fill them with people we enjoy, places we want to see, things we want to learn, and experiences worth remembering.

After all, we cannot slow the clock down. But we can make sure there are plenty of memories along the way.

Be well.

Photo from ten years ago today, August 25, 2016: