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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
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So there's this commonly stated thing about ageing which is that we perceive each day of our lives not as a day, but as being the size of the fraction of our lives a day represents. Or more simply, a day is as long for a 5-year-old as two days are for a 10-year-old and so on.
With that in mind, and knowledge of a little mathematics, our lives viewed this way aren't linear, but logarithmic, and it means that we reach middle age not at 40-something but at something on the order of the square root of our life expectancy.
Looked at this way, we've lived far more than half our lives by the time we're ten, even if we expect to live to be a hundred.
No wonder so many of us feel like children. Or act like them.
The way you perceive time is based on your state of mind, not your age. My perception of time hasn't gotten faster as I age. It's gotten faster and then slower depending upon my lifestyle and my mindset.
I think it's less about perception of time as you're experiencing it right now.
Like, a month to me right now feels much MUCH shorter than a month when I was a kid. Much more when we talk about years. But an hour is still going to be as long or as short as it wouldve been whether or not I'm doing something.
That's what I'm telling you. A month feels like a month, a year feels like a year. When people say "OMG! I can't believe that 2005 was 20 years ago!" or something like that, I think "Yes, that feels about right."
I never understand those kinds of posts. It makes me concerned that so many people have such a loose grasp of the passage of time.
It is because their lives are too boring and uneventful? Is it because their life is very hectic with constant responsibility?
I see comments about x being y years ago "do you feel old now", and all I can think is that even covid feels like a lifetime ago and that was only a few years ago.
There are studies that show that our brains like to automate routines and habits. For example, when I had a job that was 1 hour away from where I lived, at first that hour of driving felt like an eternity, but after a year of making that drive I would start to day dream and then suddenly I would be there without much memory of driving.
Out of curiosity, how old are you?
Between 35 and 45
Interesting, I’m similarly in that range and I can definitely perceive the difference in the passage of time relative to when I was younger.
If you look at my comment, I'm taking about the inability to recognise how long ago familiar things have happened, specifically not realising that something familiar happened a long time ago.
Do you find yourself being surprised that things you are familiar with happened when they happened rather than happening much more recently? Have you not noticed that a year passes nearly every 365 days?
Idk what your struggle with relativism is here but I have noticed that 365 days a year happens every year.
I learned that by the time I was in school.
None of us are ignorant to how many days are in a year, we’re referring to the perception of time.
As you age time feels as if it goes faster, you have experienced more and so relatively time is passing in smaller increments relative to your overall life but taken on the whole they appear more condensed.
People feeling as if distant events are more recent is not uncommon, we aren’t broken, and you’re being awfully weird about it.
So my midlife crisis car was actually an RC car? 🤯