Slow Down Time Before it Ages You
How do you slow down time? Don’t you feel it speeding up? Isn’t it perplexing how much faster time seems to go by the older we get? Life seems to morph from a vivacious and carefree start to a lackluster and often exhausting finish. We switch gears from a leisure cruise to an impatient race that never seems to reach the end fast enough.
As a result, people inevitably grow from optimistic children to pessimistic and despondent adults. People get caught up in the busyness of being adults and forget how to embrace their inner youth.
Obligations begin to take precedence, and imagination and creativity get left on the back-burner to die.
Visions and dreams eventually change to fit the expectations of others, and life takes on a different perspective as adults accept this transition. This shift in perspective ages us far quicker than the natural progression of the body, and we feel those consequences.
The more we get buried beneath life, the more time continues to take its toll on us. Wonder and curiosity become luxuries we just can’t afford in the adult world.
Life begins to look bleak, and it just isn’t as enjoyable as it used to be when we were kids.
The Paradox of Time
Let’s go back to your early childhood when time and money had no domain over you. Do you remember incessantly prodding your parents with remarks like “I’m bored,” or “there’s nothing to do.”
Funny enough, our parents never reciprocated that same complaint – not once, at least from my experience. My parents always seemed to be busy with some kind of task at hand. Whether it was cleaning up around the house, working, doing weekly chores, or taking care of my brother and me, there never seemed to be a lot of downtime for either one of them.
Now that I’ve grown up, it seems like everyone gets trapped in a constant caffeinated fix of trying to accomplish more.
We’re all balancing the overwhelming obligations we have to get done before the end of the day while trying to live life to the fullest. It’s a catch-22 that’s never going to work for anyone no matter how hard we try to force it.
From the moment we get out of bed to the moment we turn in for the night, there always seems to be something that requires our attention. Subjugated in this holding pattern indefinitely, time all but escapes us, and we lose our control of freedom.
Day in and day out these monotonous routines and deadlines imprison us and our sense of purpose in the living world. We automate our daily functions and another week passes by in the blink of an eye.
We’re all just waiting for the weekend to get here and act as a saving grace – a temporary reprieve from the stressful work week. Monday soon rolls around again and the unshakeable pattern repeats.
We take on new projects and more things are getting added to our to-do list, but we can’t seem to slow down time. Contrarily, time feels as if it’s speeding up as we fill in the blanks with more busy work.
Routines and Deadlines
Before we know it, a year goes by, then two, then five, then ten. The cycle continues speeding up as the years and lost precious moments stack up. In the meantime, most of us will try to find a way to distract ourselves from this reality.
Whether that be through purchasing new material possessions, plugging into a television program, or entering a fantasy world through video games.
This helps alleviate some of the discomforts we experience when we are dissatisfied with the trajectory our lives have taken. Life turns into a swirling hurricane, a mixture of distractions and obligations, and we begin to lose our way. The routines and deadlines might be kept at bay for a while, but the reality doesn’t change.
We blink and find ourselves wasted and wilted upon our death beds wondering where all that time went. As kids and adolescents, we all think we have an unlimited supply of it.
Surprisingly, it’s the one resource we are truly abundant in at that age. Oftentimes we realize too late just how scarce and fleeting time really is.
For an abiding decade, you are 12 and for a fading moment you are 32. The years move faster than counting down the days until the next holiday. We glance at the calendar and the crossed-off dates remind us that another month has already gone by.
Then another year lapses and another one soon follows that one. We’re occupying our time with tasks and moments, but are those moments really contributing to our soul? Are we finding passion and meaning in what we are doing?
Reflecting on Time and Money
When old age starts to creep in, we look back on our lives and reflect on what we have accomplished with our time here on Earth. Perhaps some of us lament our mortality and feel a tinge of sadness for the things we didn’t do or could have done.
Maybe regrets still have a hold over you? Others might smile and feel satisfied with the way their lives have played out in the grand adventure of being human.
Either way, all of us will have to reflect on our choices when we approach death. So what will you be reflecting on? Will it be regrets you have tucked away and dragged with you?
Or will it be cherished memories you can honestly be proud of? The decision solely rests on your shoulders, and no one else can determine that for you.
Make sure the memories of your life are worth watching when you exit this plane and enter the next. The material possessions you’ve accumulated will amount to nothing in the end.
The promotions and awards may even appear trivial after deep introspection. The only things we can truly carry with us into the next life are the priceless memories we have collected along the way.
Did you spend enough time with family and friends? Did you fearlessly pursue your dreams without wasting time on pointless milestones you were told would bring you fulfillment? Time and money often point in opposite directions so make sure you pay attention to where your focus is at.
A Study Of Age And Time – Slowing Down
There once was a study that took a group of participants ranging from the ages of 14 to 94. These participants were then asked about the pace at which they felt that time was passing by.
For shorter durations of time, say a week or a month, the subjects’ perception of time did not appear to increase with age. These shorter periods remained constant regardless of the number of obligations each individual had accrued with age.
However, for longer durations of time such as a decade, the older participants of the group felt as if the time elapsed much more quickly. When asked to reflect on their lives, the older demographic expressed the fervent notion that in their childhood, days felt like weeks, weeks like months, and months like years.
However as time progressed and these participants grew older, they felt as though time had begun to speed up. This began gradually during their teenage years and more dynamically as they began approaching adulthood.
Why Time Speeds Up
So why is it that as we grow older, time becomes a fluid entity that begins to disappear before we know what hits us? This speeding-up of time starts slowly and increases with each year that passes by. We don’t even realize the rapid turning of the clocks until it’s too late.
One possible reason to explain this is that our lives start to morph into one massive, redundant routine as we grow older. We begin to automate daily procedures and try to become as efficient as possible with our time. Each day lived appears identical to the one prior, and the day after mirrors the one that preceded it.
Soon we become set in our ways. Our ways become routines that transform into habits. Eventually, these habits define what our lives specifically mean to us as individuals.
We trade curiosity for apathy and wonder for expectation. Without any novelty or new experiences to stimulate our awareness, it’s difficult for our minds to engage in the present moment and study time more definitively.
The Problem With Patterns and Routines
Patterns of monotony hardly allow you room to grow physically or mentally. Sure routines and deadlines allow us to maximize productivity when it comes to our working environments, but we lose a crucial part of being alive in the process.
That part we lose is our sense and perception of time. This is why it’s important to break up these routines.
Our brains are intelligent organs, and they seek to be as efficient as possible. They encode new experiences but not familiar ones. These new experiences are then stored in our memories for recollection purposes.
The familiar experiences, however, are disregarded because your brain has already processed those specific moments at an earlier date. Recording these same experiences would expend unnecessary energy.
This would just overload your brain with pointless repetition that wouldn’t contribute any further significant value to you.
This is why the work week seems to be one big blur after the next. Your brain logs the novel moments into your database, but if you’re spending each day repeating the same tasks, it’s going to dump out the excess.
This goes for all aspects of our lives. If each one of us is going through the motions with everything we do, inside and outside of work, our brain is going to treat those redundant tasks in the same fashion.
Don’t believe me? Tell me in specific detail what you had for dinner last week on Wednesday. Or give me a detailed account of your work day from last Monday. Go ahead, I’ll wait… Can’t remember? That’s okay, most of us can’t either.
If we’re all conducting our lives on autopilot, it becomes more and more difficult to retrieve certain memory queues.
Time is Infinite As Children
Now reflecting back on our childhood, everything we experience and indulge in while we are young, we are experiencing most of those memories for the very first time.
Each day we live becomes a wonderfully, stimulating reality of the beauty of what life can offer. We are consistently learning and interacting with our environments, our thoughts, and those around us. Every day we wake up there are going to be some fresh experiences in store for our brains to add to our memory vault.
Why do you think children consistently probe you with innocuous curiosities of “What is this” or “Why is that so?” They are engaged and excited to learn about the many facets of life.
Children are so enthralled and fascinated by every little thing they immerse themselves in.
It is perhaps one of the purest, most unadulterated moments in which, as humans, we are 100% living in the present moment. Children aren’t concerned with duties or tasks others continue to pressure them into. They aren’t fretting over where their future is going or where their past has been. They aren’t even worried about the opinions of others and how they are perceived.
The only thing they remain focused on is the present and being themselves. Dreams run wild and anything is possible for them.
As adults, we truly can learn a lot from children but I’ll save that discussion for a future post.
The Automation of Time
Now as we get older, we start to become more familiar with our environments, and we begin to develop an idea of how the outside world works. This is how you make money, this is how you apply for a job, and this is how you can improve your odds for success in life. This is where the automation process starts.
We begin to slowly integrate ourselves into the crowd of people that make up modern-day society. We start to adopt the philosophies of normality and become set in our ways.
Eventually, we only occupy one small corner of the world, stay within our creature comforts, and become rooted in routines that we establish for ourselves without even knowing it.
Nothing major ever changes, but you can enjoy a quiet, comfortable existence. Sure the exciting perspectives you had as a child begin to atrophy, but you’ve supposedly “made it” in the eyes of societal convention.
This kind of lifestyle may work for some people, but something is lost in all of that noise – our sense of wonder. We no longer become enthusiastic about taking long strolls through the woods. The imagination of it has lifted.
Engagement at work has dropped to an absolute minimum. Routine and repetition have taken over to become more efficient with our time. Talk at dinner each week is less interesting because, let’s face it, your life is not anything to be impressed about.
Somewhere along the way, we lock ourselves behind closed doors and build walls around us. We set up barriers to unfamiliar territory, and we convince ourselves that we are so lucky to live the life we currently have.
Something always seems to be missing though. We shy away from new opportunities. We disparage risk and embrace security, yet we still feel empty and desire something more out of life.
Engage In New Experiences
With nothing new to experience, the routine becomes our life. Life blends into one big blur of the same day lived over and over again. Sure we might escape off to some nice fancy resort for a whirlwind trip that lasts for a week.
But we come back to the same things that perpetuate until the next holiday or 10-day vacation. The cycle continues and time does not slow down.
Don’t you find it funny that when you go on vacation you can recall almost every single detail of that trip? You remember traveling to get there, the new sites you saw, the food you ate, the friends you made, the laughs you shared, and the struggles you endured.
Suddenly, just one week away seems like a year to you. We all need more of that in our lives. Do not live your life on autopilot. These new experiences will resurrect your dormant spirit.
So how do we fix this paradox of time? The answer is simple. Start living with intention. Begin to seek out new places, new trades, new experiences, and new people. Immerse yourself in the unknown and fully embrace anything that comes your way, both the good and the bad.
Become aware of where you are and be mindful of staying in the present. Focus on where you are instead of where you are going. Become enamored by life and do not prioritize efficiency over experience.
Embrace Uncertainty
If you want to live each day as if it were your last, you have to unlock the door you shut yourself behind. Knock down those four walls you built around yourself and never look back at the banal existence of a society that rewards productivity over living.
Shed your creature comforts, and forgo your dogmatic presumption that the way you conduct your life is the best way possible. Maybe there’s a new path out there for you to forge.
Endorse the mind of a child again and begin zealously learning about everything and anything you desire. View things in a different light and try to understand someone else’s perspective for a change.
Take up a class you’ve been desiring for so long. Buy a one-way ticket to some exotic land. Quit your job if you can’t stand the monotony anymore. Start a business if you’ve given it enough thought. Run a marathon. Join a band. Learn yoga and start exercising. Practice meditation. Pick up a new book. Learn a new language.
Just do something new.
Engage your mind. Fail, learn, and grow. This is how you can win back your freedom of time and your sense of wonder. This mystery still perplexes many individuals on this planet, and sadly, many will never understand why it is so.
It’s scary to make a change, but it is vital if you want to live every day to the fullest. Don’t settle for a life you have not yet lived.
When you embrace this philosophy, days become decades and decades turn into centuries. Follow your heart and intuition, and live your life. Don’t just exist…live.
