.png)
How to Slow Down Time
As we get older, there seems to be one universal question that
confounds us all: where does our time go? It feels almost impossible to
recapture the pace of our youthful summers, in which an afternoon stretched out
luxuriously and felt long enough to travel to Narnia and back without expending
real time. The ability to “time travel” seemed ever-present during childhood. Fast
forward to the present. Why does time seem to accelerate at an alarming rate
with each passing year now? That unnerving moment in which I can’t recall an
entire period of my life sends me into a cold panic. It suddenly feels like I’ve
been cheated into a reality in which my days will turn into years with the mere
blink of an eye. It’s as if I can’t find the brakes to my roller coaster!
Scientists have various theories on the phenomenon of time
acceleration, the most prominent explanation being that the more novelty we
experience, the more information we store in our memories. Dr. David Eagleman, neuroscientist
and foremost researcher on time perception, explains that time is metasensory
and that our perception of time is intricately woven with our emotions and
memories. We can think of our brains as video cameras that record life and the
world as we experience it. However, our brain-cameras
simply can’t capture all the minutiae of daily life. It therefore goes through
the process of editing and presenting the most compelling story of what is
happening in our worlds. The information editing process also affects our
perception of how fast or slowly the event occurred. We end up recording more
“footage” of the events that impact us and discarding everything else. Since our brains store such vivid, dense
memories of significant events, we are left with much more footage of these
memories, making us perceive the experience to have lasted longer.
This explanation also implies that we experience a
diminishing amount of “firsts” as we age. As we settle into the routine of
working life, our brains don’t feel the need to record repetitive events,
predictable scenarios, or actions that can be completed on autopilot. Our adult
lives often lack the novelty of childhood, causing time to seemingly slip away
in a haze.
I believe there are multiple factors that contribute to our changing
perception of time as we age. However, I find the idea of time being a
construction of the brain to be most salient. I realized that the segments of
my life that stand out in memory are periods that felt substantial in time, quality,
and impact. Some of the events that took place during those periods were
“firsts”; others breathed new life into me. Therefore, I do think we can
manipulate our perception of time, if we punctuate our weeks and months with
novelty that makes a lasting impression.
Homework: Replace an ordinary event with something foreign
this week.
Step outside your usual realm and experience a “first”. It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. It can be
as simple as spending time with a new person or replacing your Wednesday night
Game of Thrones ritual with going to a Meetup. Whatever it is, just ask
yourself: will my brain-camera bother recording this?
0 comments: