The flow of time as you get older

C

calculon000

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
When I was of a single-digit age, it seemed that one week was forever. If I had to wait one week for something (Like Christmas, for example) it was like Christian Fundamentalists waiting 3000 years for the return of Jesus. It took forever.

As I got older, the long-term flow of time seemed to speed up. What seemed to be a day when I was little, turned into a year.

Now, each month flows by quite briskly. I asked my dad about this and he said "Just wait until you're my age. A year will flow by like it was nothing."

So I can only assume that once you retire entire decades fly by.

It is the same for everyone? (I suspect it is) If so, what is the cause of it?

My theory is that because you have lived longer, the same amount of time seems smaller compared to the amount of time you have already existed. So an amount of time equal to your age will stay the same.
(Eg: When you are 9 years old, 9 days will seem like the same amount of time as 18 days when you are 18, even though the flow of time seems to speed up a lot faster than this.)

Maybe the cause is the development of the brain. Perhaps this increase in time flow is there by design.

Has anyone else ever thought about this? Are we doomed to have a life that, as you get older, seems to get shorter than it should?
 
Good question Calculon.

I think it has to do with memory. When your young most things seem knew so you remember them as they interest you. If you think of the past you think of those things and know what happened during that time. When your older everything you see is alike to something you alread know so you ignore it and dont remember it. Since you dont remember you have no memories and it seems like you cant remember time passed without anything to know of it ever happening.

Essentially older people remember less and have less of a concept of what's happened recently since they lack the memories of recent events to know that there ever was a "time".

Am I making sense?

:?: ,
The Vault Dweller
 
That's a good point!

As you get older, you remember recent stuff less and less, so it seems that less time has passed.
 
It could also be because you have to do more work which needs your full concentration as you get older. You are not allowed to leisurely explore your experience, you're too busy for that. There is also less time to just sit and think, so as the pace of life increases, one's perception of time changes. To test this theory I would have to stop doing anything and become a monk, which I have no intention of doing.
 
I'd say it's really just that the timespan you remember grows and in proportion every new day becomes smaller (either because your memory doesn't increase while the timespan you remember does or because your overall memory increases but every new day remembered only makes up a small fraction and that fraction gets smaller as the overall memory grows -- I guess it's the former of both).

I suspect memory space is somewhat limited as I don't remember as many things from my past as I used to at some point (also, last time I checked, the brain slowly corrodes, it doesn't just grow) -- I don't remember the limited biology class we had well enough to be sure tho.

However I guess that the effect will seem less obvious the older you get (if it doesn't freeze entirely) simply because the timespan you remember grows at a constant rate and the difference between fractions gets smaller the tinier the fractions get.

It's a depressing experience nevertheless. I feel as if my brain works slower every day.
 
Ever sit and stare at the clock? All I know is that time seems to have been flying by my entire life. I really wish I was given an entire eternity to live as a kid, but all I got was 12 years.

Personally, I feel that time seems to "advance" as the brain becomes more active. Watching a football game, for example, and playing it are two extremely different brain activities. When you play, you're forced to think faster, but less, and react more. When you watch, you pay to attention to the most minute details, slowing down your brain activity as you focus on one single thought at a time. When you are lining up for the play, you try and visualize the play before it's called. The player has the task of sorting through numerous information on a single play. The formation, play call, assignments, patterns, and the quota (how many yards do you want, etc...) The brain becomes extremely active and time is of the least concern. I remember I was very active as a child, always wanting to do something, even when there seemed to be nothing available to do. Now, I just want to eat, shit, and sleep.
 
I think quietfanatic has hit the nail on the head. Try just waiting in your car for something or someone. With just the radio and nothing else, all of a sudden, I find myself going through a mental dialogue I swear I never thought I'd see again since I left highschool...
"I'm not gonna look at the clock..."
"It's gotta have been at least a quarter-hour... maybe a half..."
"OK, NOW I'll look at the clock..."
"Damn, it's been 4 minutes..."
The more important the thing is the slower time goes. Waiting for your significant other will probably seem longer. When you were a kid Christmas was the pinnacle of your existence. When you're older it's probably your SO/Spouse/whatever.
 
Great topic. Alas, I haven't got anything very meaningful to add to this conversation. Just my own experiences.
I think when you're young, reality still has a lot of surprises to offer. You go outside and you still encounter things you've never ever seen before. These new experiences take some time to be processed by your brain. It's new data. Basically, like Heidegger would say, it's a form of boredom. When you're bored, time takes an eternity to proceed, a minute seems to last an hour. Once you get older and more acquainted with what goes on in the world, there are no more real surprises, all the data becomes common and is thus easily processed, and so the flow of time becomes much more fluent.
Once you reach the age of 21 or so, days will go by so quickly it becomes intoxicating and scary. I'm 28 now, bored beyond recognition and still life flies by. I'll be 50 in 5 minutes or so -- so to speak. I'll be dead within the hour. It's a frightening experience.
Take the train and go from point A (starting point) to point B (destination). Let's say you've never ever taken that route before. If it takes you 2 hours to go from A to B, it will seem to have taken 3 hours ("Are we there yet?"). Now travel back from B to A. The journey will look much shorter, somehow. Those two hours won't feel like three hours, but probably more like 1, 5 hours. You've already seen the environment, the surroundings, there's nothing new for you to experience, you know the rhythm of the train, your senses remember things instead of experience those things for the very first time.
My advice: stay young as long as possible. Don't think it's cool to be a grownup, because basically it isn't. Be curious. Be curious as hell. Ask a lot of questions. Ask other people so many questions they get tired with you. Explore the world. Read books rather than watch programs and movies you've already seen. Be creative and innovative. And, as the commercial would have it: innovate, don't imitate. Travel. Travel a lot. Do everything on foot, or try to do everything on foot. Man wasn't made to drive steel carriages. If anyhing, they only speed up time. Try out new things, don't get stuck in schemes, sytemes, habits. Breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Follow the flow of life. Make 75 years look like an eternity.

-- alec, fighting time
 
A lot of your people's theories seem to indicate that living in the city as appose to a farm would make life a lot shorter, even if you lived longer.
 
If you want to make your life seem longer, masturbate a lot. Every time you come, you think you lasted half an hour, when it was in fact two minutes.
 
The more exciting your life, the quicker it goes.

I think you guys are all on the right path of this. But I would trace it to two other variables.

First, the human practice of comparison. We compare everything in moral terms of what is better, what was best, what is worst. As pointed out above, this has much to do with the calculation of past time vs now time. As you get older, ´now´time decreases in proportion of ´past´time. Yet if you were to erase all memories than each moment would seem longer regardless of age. Remembering better times over worse times allows us to retain those memories as well as compare the moment.

Secondly is the human appreciation of it´s finite nature. We all know we are racing towards a date with a 6 foot deep hole. But we also try to extend our notion of life to beyond our natural bounds- either by what we do, by who we love and relate to, our spiritual nature, etc. But in the end, it´s also a realization that we´re all doomed. With each moment we move away from that moment when we are born and all life is an opportunity, and the uncertain point of death, when we come to that sudden stop.
 
alec said:
My advice: stay young as long as possible. Don't think it's cool to be a grownup, because basically it isn't. Be curious. Be curious as hell. Ask a lot of questions. Ask other people so many questions they get tired with you. Explore the world. Read books rather than watch programs and movies you've already seen. Be creative and innovative. And, as the commercial would have it: innovate, don't imitate. Travel. Travel a lot. Do everything on foot, or try to do everything on foot. Man wasn't made to drive steel carriages. If anyhing, they only speed up time. Try out new things, don't get stuck in schemes, sytemes, habits. Breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Follow the flow of life. Make 75 years look like an eternity.

-- alec, fighting time
Click to expand...

Yehaa!

You said that artistically and truthfully. Yes the more unique experiences you have the more you'll remember and the more you'll know time doesnt pass...it happens.

Does anyone else find it funny that Welsh didnt respond here until Ratty brought up masterabation? Seems like two things summon the grand old Democrat...smut and politics!

;),
The Vault Dweller
 
What a great topic!!!
Maybe this is all because of the theory of relativity of Einstein. Time is relative. When you're young you don't have many thigs in your mind but as you grow you get more and more things to think about or to do.
 
It's not "because of the theory of relativity", but Einstein sure wasn't making a purely physical statement when he said that "everything is relative".
It's a philosophical conclusion on the same scale as "I know that I know nothing" (or what your favorite translation of that line is), IMO.
 
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