Time moving faster with age???
 

When I was a youngster, my father would make wild claims about things in life I had yet to understand. One of his favorite lines was..."Enjoy it while you can, because the next thing you know, your my age." He would then go on to tell me about how turning 13 seemed like it was yesterday, and things of that nature. He'd say that, the older you get the faster the years fly by.

I never believed him. How could this be true? With days seeming endless at school, and homework mountains as tall as me, why would time move faster with age?

Now, with each passing year, I understand what he was talking about. For the past five or so years it has gotten worse. I'm starting to remember things like they were yesterday. On the verge of my 27th birthday, I am noticing it more and more. I don't feel old by any means. I hardly feel like I'm running out of things to do. It's just a weird phenomena of life I guess. Maybe subconsciously I'm telling myself that I've got to make things happen, make the most out of my time. Maybe try to hang onto that feeling of having things drag along. I think the hardest part for me is admitting my father knew what he was talking about! I never wanted to believe it!

Does anyone else have that sensation? This year is almost over you know! I'd be real suprised if I was the only one who felt this way. What do you think is the reason for this strange occurence? Does it bother you? Are you comfortable with it? It should be interesting to read the posts, seeing how there are so many people of different age here. Well...?

I totally agree with you. I'm about to graduate college in May. It seems like I just got out of high school yesterday. Everything is a blur, all of my memories, all of the experiences I've had... I simply can't believe that almost four years have gone by, poof... just like that.

The reason behind this? I have no idea... hopefully something will slow down, cause I don't want to wake up tomorrow and be 70 years old and about to die...

I feel like i left elementary school not all that long ago, oh the years that have flown by

Yep, I've been teaching for 17 years now and a mother for 18. But I swear I just graduated college and had my son! Time does fly!

Personally, I think the busier we get, the more full our lives our, the quicker time passes.

Just wait til you reach your 50th. Some things that happened yesterday are gone but other thing's long forgotten will find their way back. Some of the thing's you now think are really important will be totally lost to you. Take lots of notes if you want to remember it all.

You Know what it is? When your 6, a year is one sixth of your life, when you 36, a year is only a 36th of your life...

I'd go with that.

krwlz...thanks for the fraction lesson. :Þ....But as you get older, do you feel like the years pass by quicker? I understand what your fractions mean, would you care to elaborate though?

That is very true. I remember when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and it seemed liked the school year took forever. It was only 8 months but felt like eternity. Now all the sudden I am 23 and in the present time, wondering how its already 03' going on 04'.

It increases with age too. I just hit 37 and things are flying faster than ever. I agree with the assumption that the busier our lives, the faster time flies.

When fighting off Bronchitis earlier this year, I was stuck at home for several days and it seemed like an eternity. Nothing to do but lie around and take medicine.

Your all welcome for the lesson. I knew you needed it.

Becasue its a smaller percentage of your total life, it feels like its going by faster. Its just that in comparison to your whole life, a year keeps becomiing a smaller and smaller part of it.

Am I making any sense?

Yup. It's what I was going to say. Periods of time are relative. A year is shorter to a 50 year old than it is to a 5 year old. To the 50 year old, one year is only 2% of their total life, while a year is 20% of the life of a five year old.

I still think of myself as 18 from time to time and then I have to reality check. I don't really feel old, but it is kind of scary that I don't have many memories from 18-22. At 22, I kind of realized things were moving fast and worked to enjoy life a little more. But I still can't believe I will be 25 in 3 months.

<b>krwlz</b> got it right - it's relative to your lifespan so far.

To put it into perspective, if I were to divide my life in half as far as time, I would say it took as long to reach 13 as it did to get from 13 to 42. I'm sure the next 20 years will go by much faster than the last ten.

When people say "Life is short," - they're speaking the truth. Unfortunately, by the time a lot of people realize it, the advice is too late to retain its full value..

I think they seem to go by more quickly because as we get older, we compare ourselves to our parents. We think, "My parents were my age when I was born. My dad got his big promotion when HE was 39. My mom's arthritis started acting up when she turned 53 too.," etc., etc. We use those little comparisons because we can and in some way they are life-markers. They tell us where we should/shouldn't be, what we should/shouldn't be doing, etc.

Life in many ways is more difficult now than it was for many of our parents when they were coming of age. It's harder to get ahead, stay married, have kids, own homes. Contentment makes life pass more slowly I think and most Americans aren't content - an unfortunate thing really.

Time is almost going too fast. Im only 33 and I really cant picture time going any faster than it is now. Kinda scary.

I must be the odd one out here, because the years seem to be going by slower as I get older! :) I'm only 32, but it seems like a lifetime ago that I was in elementary or high school. My girls are eight and five years old, but it's tough to think of life before they were born - it feels like 18 and 15 years ago. :)

I look at my life and see that I have wasted so much of it, but at the time it was fun. IT all happened so fast

There's something to be said for the proportion theory -- when you're six, a year is one-sixth of your life, so it seems longer -- but I mainly hold to a different theory:

When you're young, you try and learn new things every day. When you look back over a year, it's full of milestones and things that stick out vividly -- the scraped knee from the first no-training wheels bike ride, first day at school, first day in a new house, first report cards. Everything is new and everything sticks in your mind. When you look back, the year seems so long because it's crowded with things.

Flash forward 30 years. You've got a job, a house, maybe kids, whatever. You do the same things all year. Sure, new things come up and have to be learned or dealt with, but in nowhere near the number that they did when you were young. You look back over the year and see -- not much new. And when one year looks much like another in memory, they tend to blend together until the past five or six years seem like just one.

Is there an answer? Sure. Live a full life. Make changes. Don't get stale. Easy to say, not so easy to do when you get past 30 or 35 and start to settle. But it's possible. I got laid off my old job about 14 months ago, moved into a new field, decided I liked it, and am now in an accelerated masters program, jumping from school to school as a student teacher, and working my ass off. When I think about my old job, it seems like 14 years ago, not 14 months.

Change. More change means more vivid memories. And the more you remember, the longer your life becomes.

I'm 51. For all that I have, time is the one thing I can not control. It moves along and leaves me wanting more. Time becomes precious. Time with my parents becomes invaluable, there may not be much time left. Time with my sons, they will soon move out and be on their own. Time keeps on leaving us with memories. Sooner or later we all realize how important time is. Then you wish you had more.

<b>Rodney</b>,
Interesting point - if our perception of time passed is based on the number of significant memories.

My wife made that comment to me just the other day, how everything is goin by so much faster now. Of course, its all in how we perceive the day and what we are doing. Time does fly when you are having fun. Another reason I think it goes so "fast", we aren't happy with where we are right now and think tomorrow will be better...

i moved from a laid back place to a bustling metropolis... time moves much faster here than it does anywhere else I've travelled to... there's always stuff to be doing rarely do you just sit around doing nothing, because there's something to do.

It's the proportional theory... When you're young, 1 year is a large chunk of your life, so 1 year goes by slower; when you're 50, 1 year is almost nothing, so it goes by quickly.

When your going on 70 it is very hard not to get depressed when you really enjoy life, but realize that most of it is behind you and you only have a few more years to do the things you enjoy...but you learn to live with it and enjoy both the sun rise and the sun sets...and everything in between. I had a good life and have no regrets...

I'm 20 and I can't remember most of my childhood. I can remember various memories about just absolutely very little compared to my teenage year and my adult year. I remember that in middle school, I would just sit around and it just felt like everyday was a year and now, I'm a full time college student and working part time and it seems that the years now are like a day to me.

I agree wholeheartly

LOL, I was just thinking the same thing myself the other day. My daughter is about to turn 1 next month and I can't believe how quickly this last year went.

I've heard all good things come to those who wait, well if I wait long enough does that make death a good thing????

Time doesn't move faster, you just have less of it left.