It seems as I get older, I get busier. Well, that's not exactly true. I feel busier, like I have less free time. I don't think that I'm actually any busier now than when I was a teen. I mean, I waste just as much time now as I ever did. The difference is my perception of time.
Time somehow accelerates as one grows older. Each year of childhood seemed to last. On and on and on. My teen years rolled along, slightly more briskly, but still took up a substantial chunk of time, making 21 seem like a huge milestone. My 20's zipped along more briskly still, each year catching me a bit by surprise with how quickly it had passed. And now it seems like if I blink, a week, a month, a quarter, a year will be gone.
I don't think this phenomenon of time seeming to accelerate as one ages is unique to me. And I think it's partly due to simple relativity (as one gets older, a day/month/year becomes a smaller fraction of one's lifetime already lived, so naturally each year seems shorter than the last), but I think it's also related to the way one accumulates memories and experience.
I mean, live in one place long enough, and you'll accumulate loads of stuff. And the more one accumulates, the smaller the place seems.
It's like that. I think we humans have a bad habit of accumulating mental clutter, just like household clutter. And the older we get, the more our mental clutter gets in the way of our day-to-day experience. The more mental clutter we have, the less time we feel we have.
It's getting late ... maybe I'll write more on this later ... must get some sleep now ...
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