Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Time's quickening

Anyone who is a teenager or older knows that time seems to pass more quickly the older you get. Early childhood years seem almost timeless; each year could be a decade. But as you grow older and attend elementary school, the years begin to pick up their pace. Before you know it, you're in high school. And though hours spent in the classroom can seem endless, these four years pass quickly. And then it's on to college and our "real" lives. From that point forward, the years really speed up, and this pace increases the older you get. For me now, at 63, the seasons pass by like the pages of a flip-book.

Such is life. But lately I've found myself wondering if this quickening also applies to a single day. It seems to me that time passes "normally" in the early morning hours. Then it slowly picks up pace through the afternoon, and by evening it's zipping by.

Anyone else out there notice this?

PS: Interesting take on this. Could it be that time seems to pass more swiftly as the day progresses because the longer we're awake, the more involved we are in goal-motivated tasks?