When
I was a kid, the time between holidays and birthdays elapsed at a
glacial pace – except for summer. Summer surged and heaved, a
torrent, suddenly evaporating on Labor Day, leaving me stranded in a
new classroom, confused and anxious, in my newest clothes. I have a
whole catalog of sensations, mostly olfactory, that will instantly
conjure my back-to-school apprehensions. Souring fallen leaves,
linoleum, dew-dappled spiderwebs, a cool morning and the tang of an
oil furnace… These memories are hard-wired into my brain and I
fully expect them to surface in my doddering years. I may some day
forget my caregiver’s name, but never the smell of a new spelling
book.
As
I’ve grown older, and have fewer years ahead of me, I have observed
an unfortunate paradox regarding the experience of passing time.
Those twenty-five weeks from Christmas to the fourth of July, that
seemed a full eon in my youth, are gone in a flash. Indeed, even
birthdays occur so rapidly that I’ve had to pause to calculate my
age. Ten years have gone by and so fast... a lifetime for a fourth
grader.
I’m
not alone in this observation, and many people have mused on specific
whys and how-comes. I used to wonder if our expanding Universe was
shrinking the fabric of time like a clothes dryer, in some cruel
cosmic equilibrium. Objective measurements of space-time, by genuine
and lettered scientists, do not support my wild suppositions,
however. The two most compelling explanations are “time ratios”
and “novelty”.
The
“time ratios” explanation, first couched by French psychologist
Pierre Janet, dates back to 1877. Simply put, as you get older, a
year is a smaller percentage of your age. The human brain apparently
marks time on a relative scale. A single year for a ten year-old is
equivalent to five years when he is fifty years old. I haven’t done
the math, but a logarithmic calendar seems unworkable for planning
even a cocktail party, when everyone lives at a different point on
their time curve.
Amazingly,
novelty – specifically unique life experiences – seems to slow
the objective experience of passing time. Think back to that first
day of school. Remember all the new faces, the new classroom, your
new shoes, and the new expectations. The next day, it was still new.
By the time you were comfortable with addition, what’s this?
Multiplication? And so on. In an unfamiliar environment, everything
is alien, and your brain is hyper-alert, actively engaged in making
sense of your new surroundings. This necessary mindfulness packs your
cerebellum with useful memories and connections to weigh and analyze
every waking moment. No wonder Christmas takes so long to arrive.
As
an adult, your life is probably fairly stable and routine. Everything
has a predictable rhythm and weeks, months can go by without any
noteworthy events. The wide, calm river of time carries you without a
ripple, nothing breaks the glassy surface.
People
who have been in traumatic car collisions can provide vivid accounts
of the sound of the impact, what they saw in the moment, the smells
of anti-freeze, gasoline. They describe junk from the floor adrift in
the passenger compartment. An airbag blocks their vision and suddenly
everything is quiet. An event that happened in a couple of seconds is
magnified, unfolded in the brain and remembered in endless fractal
detail.
I
don’t want to crash my car to expand time. There are innumerable
ways to add novelty to one’s life. Career changes, divorce, a new
home, anybody’s basic list of stressful life events will do.
Novelty needn’t be harrowing nor grim, it can arise naturally and
easily through travel to a new or foreign destination.
A
week spent in an unknown city will seem, in hindsight, a dilated
temporal extravaganza. The food, language, public transit, are all
nuts to be cracked, with wit, will, and wisdom. Waking hours packed
with adventure and exploration harken back to kindergarten, when the
world was bigger and brighter. It can be exhausting, but I promise
your memories will be rich and plentiful. A week spent elsewhere will
overshadow your routine daily existence, and for many years to come.
And
this can be done at home, too. Seek out the new, the unknown. See
your city, your hometown, like a tourist. Find the things that make
visitors gasp. Take your normal weekly routine and pull it tight
across a new landscape. It will stretch and the months of your year
with it.
The
river of time will ebb in its progress, not as a languid delta of
featureless mud, but like a playful mountain stream. Your hours will
tumble across the slope, bubbling and dancing over boulders, under
and through log jams, eddying in tranquil leafy pools. No two rapids
will be the same, there may be a waterfall occasionally, but you will
catch your breath in the bracing spume for a moment before riding a
rocky chute to another crystalline pool. And you will never forget.
