I’ve been thinking a lot about how we perceive and experience time, especially as I’ve gotten older. I’m 42 now, halfway there, as I like to say. It’s a unique experience, reaching an age where you suddenly feel, very keenly, the sensation your parents and older friends and family always told you about. Namely: “It speeds up as you go.”
But it turns out there’s a psychological reason for this, mostly related to how our brain processes information. When we’re young, because so many of our experiences are new, our brain exerts much more energy and time processing our day-to-day life. But as we age, we naturally have fewer unique experiences. We’ve been there and done that. So our brain tunes out, goes on autopilot, and our days often pass by in a blur. And some of it is just plain statistics. Simply put: when you’re eight, a year represents about 12% of your entire life. But if you’re lucky enough to reach 48, a year only accounts for 2% of it.
It’s easy to feel as if time is slipping away when it moves so fast. And you naturally want to slow it down. As if it’s money to be saved instead of spent. But I personally take comfort in that mnemonic quote by Marthe Troly-Curtin: “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
It's the first week of September. This month, I'll be sharing work on the theme of time. Today, a poem by Rumi, called "The Guest House." Popularly known as Rumi in the West, Jalal al-Din Rumi was a 13th century poet and Sufi mystic. Known for his lyricism and epic spiritual couplets, he remains one of the bestselling poets of all time.
Something I Heard is supported by Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
