“It happened so fast.”
An old friend from the early days of my teaching career recently uttered that line as we were reminiscing about working together over thiry-five years ago. Upon further reflection, it seems his comment was really a general statement about how we humans perceive the passing of time. That comment pretty much sums up getting older for many people, especially when it is time to retire and/or sign up for Social Security and Medicare.
Sometimes, it just feels like yesterday when I began my teacher training at San Diego State University. I even remember the first person I met and the first activity we did as a group from the very first class meeting. Ironically, the first person I met became a lifelong friend. Eventually, he even asked me to be his best man. And that first activity…well, I used it many times myself with new students on the first day class. I remember commuting with both of those old teaching buddies back in the early/middle 1980s…the types of vehicles, the music we listened to, some of the BS we used to joke about, etc. By the way, I retired from public education after thirty-two years as a middle school teacher. AND…that was just over five years ago! Gee, where does the time go?
Over the years, I have shared my thinking about how we perceive time with quite a few folks. Some have probably heard my analysis more times than they would like is my guess. So, I figured I would take the time now to share it with you dear reader.
Here goes:
People often think of time as a fixed number of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and so forth. Which is true…to a certain extent. However, time is also relative. Think about phrases like, “time flies when you are having fun” (2 hours) or “it took forever to get that done” (10 minutes). We all have had both of those types of reactions when experiencing time. In these cases, the “feeling” about time is determined by whether the person is enjoying an experience or not. There is another way to perceive time. It can be argued that our human perception of time is also relative to a person’s age.
For example: Remember how summer vacation seemed to last forever back in first or second grade? Or…how “old” a high school senior seemed to a lowly freshman? Then came “adulthood,” which meant what to an eighteen year old? Some folks went straight to work, others to the military, and still others to post secondary schools like college or university. Man, when you were twelve, they were old! Remember? A twenty year old would often not even deign to notice twelve year old “kids.” As one gets older, an eight year difference in age becomes less and less of a big deal. Think about it…a fifty year old and a forty-two year old are not really that “far apart” in life experience. Sure, there are differences but no where near like the difference in life experiences between a twelve year old and a twenty year old. How many times has a seventy something called their forty-five and fifty year old offsprings “you kids” and meant it? It is all relative to one’s perception is the point.
Another line we have all heard is that “age is just a number.” That is really easy for a younger person to say because they have not experienced what it is like to be a lot older. Remember how many people were tramatized by the reality of turning thirty or fifty? For some, they acted like their lives were over. More often than not, especially when they are young, many people think that how they are now, will be how they are in ten or twenty years. When a person is forty they often feel older but mathematically they are evenly split between thirty and fifty. There are definitely differences between a thirty year old you and a fifty year old you…on so many levels too! Not that one age is “better” than the other, they are just very different. One time a close friend (in his early fifties) laid the above quote on me. I thought about it for a minute and said, “You know, I’m closer to eighty than I am to forty.” Talk about differences between those two age demographics, yowza!
As we grow older time seems to pass faster too. Instead of planning out a month or two, we look out a year, four years, ten years…to retirement and beyond. Why? Because time seems to go by so fast that one needs to be ready for what is next. Our “look out into the future” has to expand to be able to cope with the perceived contraction of time.
Here is my theory why time seems to speed up as one grows older. Each year we spend alive on this amazingly beautiful planet we call Earth becomes a smaller percentage of the totality of a person’s life experience. When someone is five, one year is twenty percent of her life! That is a big chunk. No wonder summer lasted forever back then. As a person ages, each year is an increasingly smaller percentage of her life experience. So, when it is time to apply for Medicare at sixty-five, each year is one sixty-fifth (1.5%) of a person’s life experience! So, looking back over the years, it does seem like it all “went by so fast” even though it really did not. It is just our perception of time has changed as we age.
A final thought…
Often I have folks say to me, “You are so lucky to be retired. I can’t wait until I’m retired.” My answer is always something like this, “Thanks. Yeah, retirement is great but that just means you’re old. My suggestion is don’t wish your life away. Make sure to enjoy it while you are young…and old(er).” Cheers!
