The Real Life Time Warp

Have you ever noticed how the passing of time seems to accelerate as you get older? I mean, all my life I have been hearing “old folks” telling me, “oh my god, time goes by so fast… the last time I saw you you were only this tall” as they stand there holding their hand up at waist height. I remember thinking to myself, “what the hell are they talking about, the last two hours at this (insert family/formal event here) seem like an ETERNITY… and who the hell is this old lady anyways?” You have the same memories, of that I’m certain; even if you didn’t have the foul mouth/mind I had as a young lad.

Well, the time has come in my own life where I just caught myself playing the role of the old man telling one of my best friend’s kids how much he grew since the last time I saw him… while he looked at me with the “who the fuck are you again” look. Come on, who doesn’t remember uncle T? Being in my 30s, it’s a hard pill to swallow that I’m no spring chicken anymore. First they stop asking for your ID at the liquor store, then kids start giving you funny looks when you think you’re being cool, then you’re getting your good luck charms ready for bingo night at the VFW.

The relativity of time and our perception of how fast time passes is something that only comes to mind as you get older. My wife and I and one of our good friends had a conversation the other night that really put everything into perspective. We have all thought about it before, but I had never put words to it so elegantly as I did that night. Ironically my friend’s neighbor who was outside walking his cat (yes he was really outside walking his 18 year old, hobbling cat…) happened to be half-eavesdropping on our conversation and chimed in with exactly what I am about to tell you almost word for word. It is the best verbalization of why time seems to speed up as we get older that I have been able to come up with so far.

When a person is lets say 3 years old, one year’s passing equals 1/3 of their whole lifespan. Since a child only really becomes conscious of their individuality and existence as a person and starts thinking thoughts with words instead of only riding their emotions somewhere in between baby and toddlerhood, their conscious memory is even less than that. On the contrary when a person reaches age 30, each passing year is only 1/30 of their lifespan.  That same year the 3 year old goes through is consciously experienced as passing ten times faster for the 30 year old.

Think about it. Each passing year as you age makes up a smaller and smaller fraction of your total conscious timeline and memory. When you get to be 60 years old, time will be passing twice as fast to you compared to the experience of a 30 year old.  When/if you get to be 90, you feel like time just whizzes by so fast and so much change happens so quickly that you have a hard time keeping your mind anchored into the present moment. The 3, 30, 60, and 90 year old human beings all experience the passage of the same calendar year in dramatically different ways.  Asking a 90 year old to sit in a room and quietly wait for 10 minutes would be like asking a three year old to to wait for 300 minutes or 5 whole hours! From their respective perspectives. Isn’t that insane?

The ancient elders were absolutely right when they said that time is a river flowing downhill. It get’s faster and faster as you get older and if you fight the current, you get worn out real quick. As time goes by in this world more and more change happens in each age compared to the preceding one. This is actually what the Mayans were timing with their elaborate calendar system, but that’s a discussion for another time. You can read statistics all over the place that tell you that every two years ten times more data is created than in the previous two. Mind boggling! Consciousness and data grow exponentially and not in a linear fashion. More opportunity and more information is made available to us every single day than has ever been thought of before on this planet.

Back to the analogy of time being a river, some people seem to be stuck in eddy currents where time stands still. This became apparent to me a while back after going away to college for four years and returning to my home town where nothing seemed to change. It became even more shockingly apparent when I moved cross country for two years with my wife and two little girls and then moved back to the Chicago area two weeks ago where my wife and I grew up. I stopped at a friend’s parents house where absolutely NOTHING had changed since high school. Same furniture, arranged the same way… same smells, same vibe in the house, family members sitting in their same spots where they were 15 years ago. The only thing that changed was the date on the calendar.

This slapped me in the face with the importance of conscious growth. You have to grow and change and learn new things ON PURPOSE. Otherwise the river of time will push you off to the side into one of these eddy currents where you get stuck in old habits where nothing changes and there you sit as a spectator. With the amount of change that has happened in my family’s life and in my own personal awareness, I feel like I have aged at least ten years in the last two calendar years but that’s a good thing. I’m in the best shape of my life and I am getting smarter every day ON PURPOSE; not because I’m lucky. I love roller coasters and I love white water rafting. I couldn’t imagine sitting on the sidelines watching the world blow past me. I hope you feel the same way.

Keep evolving a little every day in any possible way…

Time is not measured by the passing of years, but by what one one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.

-Jawaharlal Nehur