How can I make time slow down?
Barbara Sher addresses this issue specifically in It’s Only Too Late If You Don’t Start Now: How to Create Your Second Life at Any Age. In a nutshell, time is slow when you’re a kid. So, use all the benefits (freedom, maturity, independence, wisdom, money) of being an adult to play and live harder and more fully than was ever possible as a kid. And then time will slow. (The book is ok.) I’m 27. I definitely find the rapidity of times’ passing a little alarming at times. BUT, there’s a huge upside: every time I blink I’ve achieved some sort of major, long-term goal. The increased sense of control over my life is wonderful. Set goals, put in a little time each day or week. Suddenly, you’ve achieved it. That might do a lot to alleviate some of the time-passing freakiness. >> Time is passing quickly because you’re too busy. So, I think this is wrong. Get busier in new and interesting ways, like a kid.
When I was a kid, a year was an eternity! Waiting a whole year for Christmas, or summer, or my birthday seemed interminable! Now… shit! It’s my birthday again already? I’m almost twice as old as you. When I was younger, and I heard people my age talk about how time seems to go by quickly, I would chuckle. But it’s true! (Well, the feeling is true.) My daughter is leaving for college in less than a week. But wait! She was just born, like, last week, right? One reason is seems that way is that I can remember her being born, and see that she’s leaving, in a single second, without remembering everything in between. That’s what can happen with your daily life. You remember waking up, now you’re going to bed. You haven’t left the house. What did you do? One thing that works for me, especially at work, when I feel like the day has gone by and I don’t remember where the time went: I take the last 15 minutes at work and write out a list of everything I accomplished. It gives me a feeling of s
Maybe you look at time as some sort of amount of wealth belonging to you. It’s not bad in itself. The problem is that boring you to death isn’t going to improve your situation since you’ll consider you’re wasting that wealth. You’re afraid of being poor, since you’re going to be deprived of that wealth of yours. One way to look at it is that time doesn’t belong to you. You’re already poor. You’re 25 and reasonnably lucky to have made it this far. You don’t have to manage all that future time…
You’re only 25? I was just 25! I’m going through the same thing you are and the best solution I’ve found is to be more active each day, and more varied in these activities. This can be really simple to pull off, as long as you feel like you’re accomplishing something. (For example, you could wake up early and run all your errands, meet up with a friend for lunch, go home and finish a chapter or two, catch up on your emails and calls, and then go out to a show that evening.) Being shut up at home has the same time-numbing effect that working in an office does, so a change in environment might help you feel better about the time passing. I fight with this every weekend. I’d love to just stay in and relax, but then the weekend just zips by. If I finish a project, go out, or meet with friends, then I feel I spent my time well, and the weekend seems longer in comparison.
“Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.” – Thich Nhat Hahn (a vietnamese buddhist monk) Meditation. I am not a buddhist, but I think this something that culture really profoundly understood. Find out for yourself whether it’s worthwhile. Meditation is really practice for going through life mindfully… aware of your experiences in the moment, not getting too caught up in your various mental reflexes. As benzo8 says, it’s all about proportionality. I’m 19, and for the past few months I’ve had the first feelings of having a true past. Before, nothing really felt very long ago… there were only two categories of events: during my time, and before. Now I see that an album came out in 2001 and I think… wow, that was a markedly different time, I was a markedly different person. But I do
