"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."
- Confucius
It seems that everyone in the western world believes that time moves faster as we get older. Days, weeks and years fly by like never before in the past.
Seconds tick over at the same rate for people of 30 or 60 as they do for children of course, so why does time seem to move so much faster as we get older?
The answer is that as we get older we tend to expect more from life.
We know more people, which means we receive from them and send to them more phone calls and emails, and we speak with them more often when we meet. It's not that we speak with them more than when we were teens, for example, but that we communicate with them in so many more places because we are more mobile.
We belong to more clubs and other groups. We take time to exericse instead of exercising as we execute other tasks.
We own more pieces of machinery to make our lives easier. Washing machines and dryers, lawn mowers, shavers, four-wheelers, boats, food processors, vacuum cleaners and electric toothbrushes all take time to buy, charge and fix (or fuss over being broken before we decide to trash them).
We insist on time to entertain ourselves or to be entertained. Not only do we feel we deserve it, we need this time to relax and unwind from our busy days.
Our work schedules tend to be busier because we have more responsible jobs, which require more decisions in a day, more plans to make, more meetings, more phone calls and emails to send.
Our communication with governments increases--tax forms take longer to figure out or we have to find professionals to do the job for us, we have questions that could cost us dearly if we don't find out from government representatives how to do something properly, there are more laws and bylaws we have to learn about when we removate our homes.
While we learned much of what we needed to know about looking after a home as young adults from our parents, any change to our living arrnagements beyond those early days of young adulthood requires a huge amount of time to process.
Not only divorces and breakups take time, but concern and worry over the possibility of their coming takes time.
Building new lives because of a relationship breakup, loss of a job, a legal charge for which we must defend ourselves (and the planning that goes with each) take enormous amounts of time.
Any kind of conflict that affects our emotions--including physical attacks and emotional terrorism by work colleagues, other members of our religion or neighbours--requires a great deal of time to sort through and figure out what we will do.
Keeping up with explosive volumes of news--now available to us from all parts of the globe as well as from our own community--takes time each day so that we don't appear ignorant when others talk about these events around the water cooler or over coffee.
We tend to adopt more responsibilities in our personal lives than we might have considered in past years.
Finally, those who want to sell us things or persuade us of the merits of their point of view take an inordinate amount of our time. We can learn to control those situations.
The more we expect of life, the more cluttered and complicated it gets, and the faster time seems to pass. And, in many cases, the less time we take to appreciate the good things we have in our lives.
As Confucius said, life is simple if we focus on what we need, what those we love need (not on what they want) and how we fulfill those needs. Wants and desires take time. Taking time to think for ourselves makes time seem less rushed.
Those who take some quiet time for themselves to think and to relax the brain tend to feel less that time is rushing past them, that they are in control of their lives. If we live our lives totally for others and take no time for ourselves, we don't live a life, we vicariously live the lives of the others.
There will always be others who want us to invest our time in them. They may deserve it, but we deserve for ourselves too.
Within reason, it's not selfish, but life-affirming. It's life-extending.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to help each person build the life they want.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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Comments: 36
I think that some people are afraid of being alone because they don't like the company.
Thanks again for your comment.
I must admit that I enjoy fiddling with fixing things. It makes the rest of my busier, but it a way of relaxing for me.
Anything that is "time well wasted" seems to make more mundane tasks worthwhile.
Your example of swatting a fly bears no relation to my argument, so far as I can see. The fly perceives reality and processes information in its brain much faster than humans do, but then almost every animal on earth does as well. So what?
I can appreciate that the brains of some people may slow down as they age, but others do not. Brain activity is a matter of practice--use it or lose it. Older people can improve their brain activity (thus making themselves healthier in the process) with practice. Lazy brains will perceive slower, for certain. But not everyone goes brain dead as they get older.
>"as we get older, less information is processed about our surroundings per second"< On the contrary, social scientists have shown by studies recently that people perceive more information about their surroundings as they get older, not less.
I seems to me that you and the physicists with whom you are enamoured still live in that ancient realm of theory that believe that people have less brain power as they get older. Science has proven this to be false. The human brain is the only part of the body that can improve, constantly, with age until we die. CAN improve, but it does only with the people who use theirs.
Any discussion of time or space-time (the fourth dimension) as it applies to human life is impractical because the theory can't be supported by human experience. You can tell me to "have faith" in Einsteinian physics, but if I have nothing tangible as evidence that it "works" then the advice is no better than asking people to believe in Zeus as the head of the gods.
By the way, the animals that process input information through their brains the slowest tend to live the longest. I wonder if that is supported by your physics. I have not read anything about this, perhaps because there is nothing in physics that supports it. Scientists (especially physicists) tend to ignore anything which does not support their theories.
In recent years, string theory has regained popularity after a hiatus of about 15 years in which everyone thought it was imaginative but useless because it requires multiple dimentions beyond those we are familiar with. Recently, the most popular version of string theory claims that there are 11 dimensions. If we accept that 11 dimensions exist, then string theory explains just about everything--it's the closure between quantum field mechanics and relativity.
But wait! Despite the popularity of string theory (it is being taught in some places almost as if it's fact), not one single shred of evidence supports anything to do with string theory.
So is it an interesting waste of time, the answer that Einstein looked for during the last three decades of his life, or a fraud?
Regarding the time discussion, we have misread each other. In that case I must confess that I have no idea what you are getting at.
Disclosure: I am still edgy about comments to an article I wrote about people with closed minds, then only people with closed minds commented. Duh!
That could have been me at one time.....but I have learned now to make some time for myself.
Good article, Bill. Thought provoking............
Debra, I enjoyed your rambling thoughts!
Oh well, I don't suffer. My wife and I shared some with our morning coffee as we sat and reviewed our plans for the coming day. It's a morning ritual, a time we set aside for each other. Nobody shares that chocolate. Or the poppyseed loaf or banana bread either. It's ours, all ours!
Debra, no offence taken regarding the time discussion. Try this.
Your son is 18 years old. A majority of boys 18 years of age have violated the law at least once recently (even if only by violating the speed limit). A robbery was committed two nights ago and the police will now investigate your son as the perpetrator for no other reason other than his age and the fact that he would have been in the neighbourhood because he lives nearby.
The police hypothesize that your son committed the robbery and have used conjecture to create a scenario that shows exactly how he could have done the crime, since no other evidence points to anyone else. The evidence is all circumstantial and none of it points directly at your son.
The police and prosecutor all agree that they have a good case against your son and proceed to charge him. (Remember, your son is almost certainly innocent.) No evidence shows up in subsequent investigation to link your son to the crime.
Now, how does string theory look to you?
Sonia, everyone needs some time for themsleves, if only to prove that they have some value other than as a slave.
Now, who's got the chocolate?
Please don't make me beg. I'm no good at begging (imagine Ghengis Khan on his knees and you will et an idea of what I'm like).
You should think carefully about the sacrifices you make in your life and what effect they might have on your destiny in the afterlife when next you choose to not share your chocolate.
Come on, little girl, this candy tastes really good! Don't get into my car...no..no...please! Just go away!
Here I was busy fighting off an impostor and saving to share my chocolate with you and y ate all of your.....???!!!!!!
Ok....ok....just ya wait enry higgins, just ya wait!
Bill please kidnap her...........