Speed Of Time
Speed Of Time
23. October 2020 Financial Imaginer
Today I’m celebrating my birthday. I’m turning 41. Translated for you: It means I’m now closer to 50 than to 30 and closer to 60 than to 20. At least that’s what I’m thinking about right now. Also, 41 years means I’ve spent now more time living after the year 2000 than before. Hell, just think about it, 1990 is now further away than 2050.
Yes, birthdays get me thinking “about time” every single time. And I like it. Because time flies.
The speed of time is exactly 365.242189 days per year!
Is this fast? Is it slow? Well, that’s where it gets interesting, you see:
It depends!
What’s for sure is this: Time moves forward and forward only.
The past five years I kept thinking of ways how to “slow down” time in my life. We’ve experimented a lot with life and “this time around” I’m happy to write a blog post to share my findings and thoughts with you.
Hope you too can slow down time in your life!
Today is the oldest you’ve ever been.
And the youngest you’ll ever be again.
Five years ago, on my 36th birthday my dad called me. He was 72.
He said:
First: “Congrats, you’ve already reached half my age!”
Second: “You’re catching up!”
Last: “Beware, the second half goes faster…”
Like so many other lessons I could learn from my dad:
This sunk in.
Deeply.
While I appreciate every single day that is given to me, it’s terrifying how fast time actually flies.
Where did all the time go? Tomorrow isn’t promised.
The fair part of it is: It’s the same for everyone.
Nobody has figured out how to stop – or even reverse – time.
Time keeps flying no matter what you do.
Besides eliminating Time Bandits in your life, there are many more things you can do!
Create your own life progress-bar t-shirt at NAS daily, it shows how many % of your life as vs. your life-expectancy have passed already. [no affiliate link]
Time is Relative
The futurist Peter Diamandis once said, “The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live.” At first sight, this quote simply explains Einstein’s relativity theory.
But there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Let’s take the relativity theory apart and apply the findings to enrich our lives!
What does “time is relative” mean? It simply means that depending on the perspective of an observer, the passage of very same amount of time is perceived differently. I fully appreciated this meaning once we started living in Singapore.
Singapore is located almost at the equator. Every day you got about the same amount of sunshine and darkness. Further, every day, year around, the weather will be mostly the same. There is no more seasonality in Singapore as for in places where you take notice of spring, summer, autumn, or winter.
Due to missing seasonality, every day looks and feels the same. Lack of weather stimulating our brains will make perceived time speed up. It will get hard to “archive” your memories according to a season. For me in the beginning it felt like living “out of time”.
While this concept can be well explained with seasonality or the lack of it, it also works with your personal life experience.
Think of it like this: The older you get, the more you’ve experienced life, the less “interesting” or “new” normal experiences or habits will be for your brain. As a result, given no new stimulations, your brain will switch into autopilot and cruise-control through your ordinary life. Your brain zooms out!
Remember when you were a kid, how did waiting for Christmas feel? Waiting those 25 days through December? It took an eternity! On one hand our brain has a relativity function, so let’s say when you’re a five year old, your total accrued life experience is merely (5 x 365) 1,825 days, hence, waiting 25 days translates to a relatively long time as compared to your accumulated total. Once you’re turning 41 like me today, the brain has 14,965 days to put 30 days in relation to.
The older you get, the more you’ve seen and experienced, the easier it will get for your brain to essentially put your life on FASTFORWARD – if you stick to your current habits!
Have you ever watched the movie “Click” with Adam Sandler?
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