learning to slow down time
okay, i’m going to try and not be too scientific here as i’m not a science-minded person and there are many people more qualified than me to discuss this.
look, when i was a teenager, i became obsessed with the idea of time. i liked time travel movies, books that involved time travel, non-linear narratives that make time confusing, just anything that discussed or subverted time as i knew it.
most importantly, i became obsessed with trying to understand why i experience time differently in the present and in the past.
i’ve been trying to look for the word or term for this. see, it goes something like this:
for a one-day-old baby, one day is their entire life. for a one year old, one day is one of 365. for an 80 year old, that’s an even smaller fraction.
and so on and so forth. so that, as i age, time will inevitably feel faster. i remember watching a movie and seeing this concept or thing mentioned and feeling justified in my oversimplified logic. i can’t remember the movie because it isn’t really a time-related, mindfuck movie or anything. it just came up in a dialogue.
see, i’ll be honest and admit i indulge in a little vanity. i’m vain in the sense that i like my good hair days, or when my new pants make me look slightly taller, or when my shoes go with the rest of my outfit and i didn’t even plan for them to. but i don’t care for vanity the way some people are scared of white hairs and wrinkles and fat and balding.
aging doesn’t scare me, i don’t think. what scares me is the fraction getting smaller and smaller and things and days and people going by faster and faster. i’m scared of not not being able to remember things, i guess. but that’s a whole other blog post.
no, what i’m trying to explain is that the actual science-minded people have a different explanation for aging and time feeling like it goes faster that has nothing to do with my fraction thing.
in 2019, a study published in the European Review explains that time feels faster as we age because our minds register less “mental images”. what this means, to my understanding, is that we experience less and less new things as we get older, and this lack of newness or “mental images” makes time feel like it goes by faster.
and that makes sense to me, because when you’re twelve everything can feel new. a new friend, a new subject in school, a new house, and a whole lot of firsts too. first boyfriend or first kiss, first time you lose money or first time you get yelled at by an authority figure. and i guess, in terms of that study, all of that newness and firsts make time feel like it goes slower.
then, later on, as things start to not be so new or novel or unpredictable, the mind captures less of these “mental images”, making time feel like it’s going faster.
look, i like my thing with the fraction better because i think people find it easier to visualize the numbers for a one year old and an eighty year old.
but the science or research or observation checks out for the folks at European Review too. it just kind of scares me, is all.
because i’m only going to continue to run out of newness and novelty and unpredictability as i age. so time, like in my fraction thing, would inevitably feel faster anyway.
and look, i know we can all seek novelty in adventure and whimsy and trying new things, or, as the kids back then would say, “yolo” it. but new experiences can also be so expensive. like traveling to new places and meeting new people.
i don’t know. i’m not scared of growing white hairs. i just want to be able to remember things as they are, and experience time in its most organic sense, because all this perception, “mental images” stuff scare me a bit.
so here’s to new experiences and seeking unpredictability. i’m planning to travel to a country i haven’t been to at the end of this month, so maybe that’s a good first step (isn’t cheap either, mind you).
i don’t know, i’ll try my best. here’s to slowing down time.