How To Slow Down Time

In my 50’s I was blissfully unaware that life was zipping past at high speed. But once I hit 60 I experienced the painful realisation that the days, weeks, months and years were speeding by much faster than they ever had.

In my childhood days, the onset of the six-week’s holiday was like stepping into a boundless realm of pure fun, where time itself stretched to infinity. Those weeks seemed to sprawl indefinitely before me, as if they’d never end. But nowadays, six weeks can just slip away, it’s about the time it takes me to remember to clean the fluf out of the dryer.

Am I busier? Time drags when ones doing nothing, so does time pass me by much quicker because I’m not spending my days contemplating my naval and swinging over rivers from lumps of rope. No; my childhood summer holidays were exhausting. I didn’t lay in bed, I was up and out, playing with friends, hiking up hills, trying to get balls through hoops and wandering wherever the next adventure took me.

Those six weeks of joyous fun were exciting. They were times when memories were made, and responsibility was something I hadn’t yet learned to spell. So, is the issue that my life is now mundane and therefore it passes by without much to remember; there’s no landmark moments, nothing to fix to the timeline of life, it all merges into one dull period of boredom?

I’m not bored; I’ve had more life determining moments after 60 than at any other time in my life. Real humdingers, travelling the world, meeting the Dalai Lama, six grandchildren, a new career, a few failed attempts at a relationship, the purchase of a 300 year old dilapidated cottage, new friends, and yes, I done the skydive, I could go on, but 60+ was really busy, I wasn’t bored and I created endless memories.

So why has time speeded up? It’s an accepted fact that as one gets older time goes quicker. There are a few theories why; firstly, we have the mathematical conundrum theory. During those 6 weeks holiday I’d been on earth less time, therefore at the age of 10 one year represented about 10% of my memories. At the age of 60+ I’d been around for an awful lot longer and therefore the memories created represented a much lower percentage; mathematically my brain tells me that the percentage of memories are less.

Here’s another theory to consider. As we know, children breath faster, their heats’ beat quicker, and it is possible that their brains’ rhymes are faster; with age everything slows down, including the brains rhymes; time feels slower which decreases the feeling of passage of time.

Another very interesting theory is beautifully explained by Professor Adrian Bejan. His Paper, Why the Days Seem Shorter as We Get Older, is definitely worth a read. Time is relative, and he’s convinced me that his theory is the mostly likely cause for my loss of time. The Professor explains that with age we process visual information slower and therefore time accelerates with age.

The ‘mind time’ is a sequence of images, i.e. reflections of nature that are fed by stimuli from sensory organs. The rate at which changes in mental images are perceived decreases with age, because of several physical features that change with age: saccades frequency, body size, pathways degradation, etc. (Bejan 2019).

So, if the Professor’s theory is right, we can reverse the slowing of time by increasing our mental imagery. Live in the moment; absorb what’s around you, create those mental images, hold them close to you; it might slow down time.

Another theory, which is fascinating, and holds some credence with me; our brain determines new experiences, but not ones that are familiar to us, to create memories. When we’re young there’s so many more new experiences than when we’re older, so the number of memories our brain creates for us is reduced as we age.

If this theory is true, we can slow time down by creating new memories frequently. If you’re wondering whether to take that hot air balloon ride, jump out of a plane or go volunteer abroad for a year, the answer is, it might slow down the rate at which your remaining years pass.

So, the recipe for slowing down time is; live in the moment, absorb what’s around you and create new memories. Much easier said than done if you’re living on your own (or in a loveless marriage), on a tight budget or you’ve lost your enthusiasm for life somewhere along the way. But stick with me, we’ll work on all of these negative points.