It's 4:28 in the afternoon as I sit down and start typing these words.
Truthfully? I have NO idea how that happened... it seems like a very short time ago that I arrived at work. And that was actually at around 11:00 this morning, over five hours ago. Yet the time has passed incredibly quickly... like it was only 30 minutes or so.
And here's the strange thing: It's not because I have been horrendously busy and engaged in things to keep me occupied. If anything, "pretty much nothing" has happened today.
Back When We Were Children...
How does time pass for this guy?
Remember sitting in class, in grade school, waiting for the class to be over? Maybe there was a clock on the wall... and it felt like the second-hand was inching its way around the dial at a snail's pace.
Yes, I'm old. I predate digital clocks.
I also remember it being funny to listen to adults and older people talk about how "time flies." Didn't ever feel like that, to me... time seemed to move incredibly slowly.
Now I'm a 50-something adult, and it suddenly feels like time does fly. I have pretty much no idea where today went. And I wasn't busy, or distracted by other people or outside forces. In less than 30 minutes I will be closing up the gallery and heading home again.
Is Time Just An Imaginary Construct?
Some months back, someone commented to me that time seems to "move faster" as we age because we have more life already spent, and less life remaining.
Fall leaves on our beech tree
I've been trying to understand the deeper meaning behind that assertion... Seems to suggest that the "speed" of time is proportional to the percentage of expected life we may have left on this plane of existence.
Still not sure I can wrap myself around that concept.
So here I sit, and it's now 4:38 and I am trying to come to terms with the idea that it feels like several hours just "vanished" into thin air, like I "lost" them in some weird way.
I realize this is a strange post, compared to my usual fare... but this is a strange day!
How about YOU? Does it sometimes feel like time moves "strangely?" Does it seem like time moved slower when you were a kid, than now when you're an adult? Do you sometimes have days that seemingly pass, and you don't know where time went? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 171120 17:25 PDT
Time as we think about it doesn't exist. Now I'm not trying to go all zen on you by saying that—bear with me. It is always now. There is no past where we were and no future where we are going. Only now. We change now, yes, as a river flows, so the idea of the past is somewhat useful when we want to consider our previous states, but... it's not real as such; there is no way to step back into it because it's not there, just an idea in our heads.
And that's the key really. The flow of time is only in our heads and when we look back in our memories that all flatens and so it appears to have happened very quickly, in the same way that your memory of a book shows that the end and the beginning are right next to each other, when in reality it took you several weeks to read that book.
The now seems to go quicker as we age because we pay attention to it less. Everything is familar, so we don't notice it. As we don't notice it, we make no new memories of it, so there is nothing to perceive in retrospect, making it seem like it flew by.
Does that make sense? See, kids—everything is new. They are looking at everything, noticing everything, questioning everything. They are making so many memories. That is why now feels longer to them. It feels longer to use to when we suddenly move into new situations where we find we have to pay attention.
Try meditation. Monks generally report that time slows down to a crawl for them, not just as they meditate, but in daily life. Because they see without thinking and they pay attention. Ask a normal person sitting on a bench in the park what he is looking at and he will give you a vague answer. The sky, some ducks. Probe and he probably will be unable to say more. Ask a monk the same and he will tell you how many clouds there are in the sky, how many ducks, how many people are wearing hats, etc. He is paying attention.
Anyway, sorry about my rambling. All this is just to say I don't think time is actually going faster because there is nothing to go faster. It is all in our perception, and all because as we get older we stop paying attention to things because they are so familar as to be uninteresting to our brains.
Does that make sense or do I sound like I've been listening to too much Ram Dass? haha
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Thanks for your thoughtful response!
"Be Here Now!"
Ram Dass was definitely onto something... and I do actually meditate almost daily, and I have several peaceful pastimes I engage in... whether they slow the perception of passing time I'm still open to; meditation is probably the best, precisely because it is an exercise in being completely present. Alas, within the structure of modern society, sitting Samadhi isn't necessarily all that viable as I am yet to convince my grocery to accept "peace of mind" in exchange for vegetables.
But I certainly appreciate the sentiment.
Yes, there is no past or future, just an endless stream of "right nows."
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I think we all have that feeling, could it be a warning?
A warning which remind us to livelifefullest?
Time flies, especially when you have fun.... there must be an optimum...
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Yesterday felt more like an example of "Time flies, REGARDLESS of whether you're having fun, or not."
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What's really strange is that this subject has been on my mind a lot for the past couple of days. I was just talking to some of my oldest friends and we were saying the same thing, talking about how we used to look at the clock in class and a few minutes felt like a few hours.
I am about to put up a post that you are in ;)
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It seems to be "going around." After I got home yesterday, my wife (unprovoked) remarked that "time had felt strange" yesterday. Which just underscored why I'd felt motivated to write this, in the first place.
HAH! You chainlettered me! I like that challenge, though... although we're starting to run thin on able bodied photographers to nominate.
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Synchronicity :)
Yup, I did ;) I know, the only choice is to start nominating people who aren't known for photography. Then can choose not to do it, or find out they really enjoy it and maybe kickstart a new passion...I only just got into photography this year because of steemit and wanting to try something new :)
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I know exactly what you mean - it's freaking me out and the only way I seem to be able to slow it down is to fire up my vape and suck down some primo bud.
Back when I was young a 20 minute motocross race seemed to take about a whole day and include five hours of arm pump...
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I was gonna say "better living through pharmaceuticals," but that's not exactly right... for me, weed is mostly good for putting me to sleep... but I totally get what you're saying.
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I'm in my late sixties...you have no idea.
Time doesn't just FLY...it's hypersonic.
In other news...I can sit on the patio..smoking a cigar...just thinking.
for hours...trying to visualize 'what will it look like'.
what ever 'it' might be.
have you ever tried that? Try to visualize all the pieces of something...oh...like the stringers, frames, bulkheads, masts, motormounts, rudder, keel, transom ,deck and hatches on a boat..and how they will all be interconnected.
Form a picture of it in you mind...then rotate it...like in 3d...
not easy..
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Here's one for you...
When I was a kid of maybe six or seven, my elderly auntie (with whom I stayed whenever the 'rents were traveling) taught me the value of "sitting and seeing."
We'd go out and sit on her back porch... and we would "sit and see."
Which was being still, thinking, observing nature and allowing whatever might come into our minds to simply be there, for exploration.
If I was fidgety, she'd give me an object to think about. "Visualize a cow, and everything about it," she'd say.
Been doing that ever since... sounds very similar.
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Yup..I read somewhere...
The master said to the child.
If you can concentrate on ONE thing for a whole minute...you can rule the world.
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Good mental exercise for the aged I guess;)...but I'm not there yet!
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oh...there are SO many comments I could make in reply to that.
I'll refrain.
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Au contraire, mon ami! 😆 😆
I have been thinking something similar actually. Does your own body clock know something we don't? ( barring freak accidents etc)
If you can imagine a body of water, with a hole at the bottom ( I suppose I could just say a bath, rather than try to create a picture...)
Anyways, if the water was time, it would speed up, as the bath reduced in volume, and the draining of 'water' speeded up. ( proportionally speaking)
This would account for the speeding up of time sensation, (one I am experiencing myself as I hit the big '50') BUT ONLY if there was a sentient consciousness at work, in the back background - aware of limited time.
Because it is a subjective experience, there is no way to compare it to another individual.
Pesky time.
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Yeah, time is very pesky... I like your bathtub analogy.
Time messes with me sometimes, when the dreamstate mixes in. I'll jump out of bed in the morning because the alarm reads 8:11 and I'm running late... run in the kitchen and turn on the coffeemaker, and then realize the time on the microwave reads 6:47. And I'm thinking "WTF???" Then I walk back in the bedroom and the clock now reads 6:50. I only dreamed it was 8:11... but it was super realistic.
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That's from being high the night before - or plain old dementia, not time issues. 😆 😆😆 😆
I am in a very flippant mood today - feel free to ignore me ! -lol I have noticed this mood comes over me happens when I am writing creatively...happy....mmmm
(I can't think of another segway into pointing you towards my latest story ! lol)
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That's pretty cool-- I've considered serializing a book on Steemit; I see your creativity is flowing quite well, lately!
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The 10 day break from the steemit - the turmoil - definitely helped.
And avoiding getting too embroiled in current (shitty) affairs, also seems to help the flow.
Emotional over investment in 'things' never works out well.
What is your book about, matey?
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Technology breaks can work wonders sometimes. Not a luxury I get to enjoy often, but nice when it presents itself.
I mostly write non-fiction-- self-development type stuff; psychology, human condition musings and such. For some time, I've been working on a "How to make peace with living in a world that's always trying to make you into something other than just yourself" piece.
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Is that, like, an anti NLP publication?
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I have a lot of days where I don't know where the time went. Yes, times flies more quickly when we get older, why? I really don't know. Maybe we are trying to take in everything before our time elapses. Yesterday my children were babies. Today they are married with children of their own. I think we value our time more when we are adults and in a sense flies faster for us. Thought provoking conundrum...
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It's a thought provoking conundrum, indeed... and I'm enjoying people's different takes on it. These days, the only thing that even remotely slows time is meditation.
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I think time moves faster as we get older just by the way we measure and perceive time. When you are 1 year old, you have to wait the length of your entire life to reach the next year. It literally takes a lifetime to reach two years old not that anyone would remember that young.
When you're fifty, 1 year is only 1/50th of your life and will seem like a much smaller span of time to get to the next year. A much smaller piece of your life was spent on that year when you are 50 compared to 1 year old.
The same could be said about hours and minutes. What fraction of your life is 1 hour now compared to when you were a child? That's the way I see it, anyway. I hope it even makes sense.
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It totally makes sense, and I have heard similar explanations before... including the one that time seems different because as we have already seen more and more of what happens every day; what ultimately "slows" time is the newness of things. That makes sense, too.
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Early parenthood. That first year, some nights, just a single night felt like it would never end, a never ending sleepless torture. But in a different way, before you know it your baby is a toddler, then in a blink a teen.
Time is definitely an abstract concept.
It definitely feels like Christmas rolls around a lot faster than it did as a kid.
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It does seem to move a lot faster, to be sure. It'll be Thanksgiving in a couple of days... and before we'll even be done with that, it'll already be Christmas.
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Until I was forty life seemed oh so long but the last decade has passed in the blink of an eye, and now each month feels like a week. I'm almost certain that shown a few nice coloured graphs and pie charts I'd be ready to don a tin foil hat and declare that 'they' have speeded up time.
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Ha... that made me laugh! I sometimes feel ready to join the Tinfoil Hat Brigade since more and more stuff feels less and less "real." Whatever that means...
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I have a very weird relationship with time. In a way, it seems as though my 19 yo was just a baby very recently. Yet it also seems that I don't remember life without my 4 yo. It's fast and slow all at the same time.
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It is weird sometimes... I have similar bits in my life. It feels like 100 years ago that our 26-year old moved into her own apartment (2010) but it feels like yesterday that she moved from Ohio to near us in Seattle (2012).
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Kids break everything, even time I guess.
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OMG so true. Sometimes I look back and I think "where did the last 8 months go?" Sometimes I have days that last years. And sometimes I smoke weed and it feels like I don't know anymore if it is morning or nighttime.
And then I look at my body aging and it is hard to accept that I'm already 32?!?
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It's funny... there was a time I used to look in the mirror (my 30s) and I'd wonder how the heck I got so old. Now (at 57) I look in the mirror and the person looking back at me doesn't even have "an age."
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If I want to know whether I enjoy doing something, I recall the "time speed" of the session. If it was a flying speed, then chances are I'm liking it.
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Yes, that is often a very good indicator of how absorbed we are in some activity.
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reminds my old school days
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I just had a strange thought. What if people with Alzheimers just blinks and days disappear? It's totally normal to them, but absurd to us? That is an interesting thought you have with the rate we sense time moving having a direct relation to how much we have left...
I'm in the Twilight Zone over here.
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