Well today was the first snow. It makes me think back to the beginning of summer. Being the ultra pessimist that I am whenever its the beginning of summer I just think of how it will be over before I know it and low and behold here I am staring down the barrel of winter and summer has come and gone.Of course the older I get the quicker time passes, the time since the start of summer has happened so quickly. I saw a show on Discovery quite a while ago that had done a lot of research into age and the perception of the passage of time....
You know when you're a kid and time seems to pass so slowly ( I remember probably my first year of school, the summer seemed so long that I thought that you went to school for a year and then you had another year off). Anyway in the study they found that this is in fact true and that the younger we are the longer we perceive time (that's why kids have such short attention spans and get bored so easily). The study didn't really offer any reasons as to why it is this way but here's the scary part. Our mental middle age is 20 years old. Meaning that from age 0 - 20 will mentally seem like the same amount of time as age 21 - 80. I don't think anyone can deny that after they leave high school time seems to pass much more quickly. I cant imagine what it would be like being 70 something. By this study a year would pass as quickly as a childhood day (or even hour).
tags: winter, science,
There was snow a few weeks ago here in Boston. NOw it has been to warmm 60 degree weather in Nov!! I love the snow
ReplyDeleteSee...this is why I love your site so much--we tend to spend our time contemplating the same issues. I can remember being in my twenties and thinking about why time passed so quickly the older we got (I'm 36 now). I've come to the conclusion, albeit the obvious conclusion, that time seems to pass more quickly as we get older because:
ReplyDeleteAt the age of two, one year is half of our life.
At the age of 10, one year is 1/10 of our lives.
At the age of 70, 1 year is 1/70 of our lives.
Etc.
It's all relative: summers seem to fly by when we're older because two months becomes less and less of a fraction of our total existence. Does that make sense?
It's the same with friends: I just ran into a woman I was friends with when we were kids. She's three years younger than me. It just SHOCKED me that when I realized that she's 33 years old now. It didn't seem to make sense because, in my mind, she was only supposed to be half my age. At least that's was the reality when I was 6 and she was 3.
What are your thoughts on my thoughts?
Bhakti
p.s. DEE--there's some pretty funny jokes being posted on the comment section of my latest post. I bet you have a few awesome ones you could share with us! Come back and visit...I miss ya!
I think your explaination of the age ratio makes the most sense. (when youre 2, 1 year is half youre life). In fact thats probably where the science comes into it.
ReplyDelete