Time: On the clock or in your life.
Photo by Jordan Benton on Pexels.com
As I tore off the first calendar page of 2021 I wondered — where did time go? Why did the month of January fly by? Then I recalled an article I’d read years ago about a theory that time really does go faster as we age. Of course that’s nothing new to us elders. Time does seem to go faster the older we get.
But time is time. There are just so many hours in a day. However, Albert Einstein said it’s also relative. He proved that time actually slows down due to gravity and acceleration. Beyond that, how do time and aging interact?
That sent me on the quest to learn more about time and how it seems to move faster for us as we age.
From various sources, it does appear that the speeding up of subjective time with advancing age is well documented, but there is no consensus on the cause. It boils down to how our brains process information. How a clock measures time and how we humans perceive it are quite different. Time moves forward, steadily, without missing or reorganizing a beat. So we think. But our brains perceive time differently.
Neuroscientist Professor Adrian Bejan hypothesizes that, over time, the rate at which we process information slows down, and this is what makes time ‘speed up’ as we grow older.
As we age, he argues, the size and complexity of the networks of neurons in our brains increases — electric signals must traverse greater distances and thus signal processing takes more time. Moreover, aging causes our nerves to accumulate damage that provides resistance to the flow of electric signals, further slowing processing time. Bejan believes that slower processing times result in us perceiving fewer “frames-per-second” — more actual time passes between the perception of each new mental image. This is what leads to time passing more rapidly. When we are young, each second of actual time is packed with many more mental images. Like a slow-motion camera that captures thousands of images per second, time appears to pass more slowly.
As he puts it, “People are often amazed at how much they remember from days that seemed to last forever in their youth. It’s not that their experiences were much deeper or more meaningful; it’s just that they were being processed in rapid fire.”
Compare the time perception of a 10-year old as opposed to a 50 year old. For that youngster a year represents 10 percent of their entire life and even 15 to 20 percent of their conscious memory. But one year for the older person represents less than 2 per cent of their recallable life. Thus the gradeschooler has those long days in school and almost endless summers while most adults experience the rapidly fleeting days, weeks and months.
The days are long but the years are short.
Another intriguing hypothesis stems from the fact that young children have faster heart rates and faster breathing than adults. It is likely, therefore, that their brains’ electrophysical undulations and rhythms occur faster as well. Just like the heart’s pacemaker slows the heart’s rhythm as children age, it is possible the brain has a pacemaker as well that slows as people age, and this neural metronome provides an internal sense of the passage of time.
David Eagleman who has studied the brain’s perceptions of time says “Time is a rubbery thing. It stretches out when you really turn on your brain resources. Conversely, when you say, ‘Oh, I’ve got it or I understand,’ it shrinks up.” The key, he believes, is forcing your brain out of its comfort zone to try, to do, to learn new things.
If we assume that time moves to a faster beat as we age, and if time is relative, can I do something to slow time down? As I age, can I focus not so much on how speedily my remaining life days are moving but rather how I can stretch them out in not only quantity but quality?
The good news is “yes.”
LifeHacker is a fun and casual website that lays out what it called some “tools” to trick your brain into slowing down time.
—Be mindful. Focus on the moment, the here and now. Be aware of what’s really going on in that present moment. Eckhart Tolle, in his book, The Power of Now, says, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
—Set daily goals. Even in these pandemic times stuck at home, there are things to do, plans to be made. They needn’t be monumental. Just things that need to be done or that you want to do. Plan a meal, read a book for 15 minutes, clean out the junk drawer, write a letter. (i.e. work on my blog) A feeling of accomplishment spawns contentment and optimism.
—Stay intellectually curious. We are never too old to learn something new. And in terms of lengthening our days, those new experiences or challenges are especially important as we age because new information takes more time to process, making time appear to last longer. Keep learning for a good long life.
The wizard Merlin thought so. I loved his comment in the book by T.H. White:
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
—Pause and refresh. It’s absolutely surprising what that can do to lift the spirits. Take a deep breath and simply enjoy the beauty of the day. I did that last week when our world was bathed in the beauty of something called “hoar” frost.
Hoar frost in my backyard
I’d never heard of the term but I had to take a look. So I tromped around my yard, taking a few pictures. Hoar frost is white ice crystals deposited on loose, attached objects in clear, still cold weather. The name, hoar is an old English adjective that means showing signs of age. The frost makes the trees and bushes look like white hair. It was beautiful.
Well, look at that. I learned something new and in the process made my day a little longer and certainly more beautiful.
Come to think of it, isn’t that what life is all about.