Rongnongno Loc: FL

I came back from a few months in europe not more than 3 months ago and yet it feels like eons have passed.

Why is that?

I checked around me. My pace of life has not changed nor has my interest, everything is normal. I took a step back and paid attention to other things like the news and there I found the culprit.

We have so much information pulling at us from so many directions we lose the sense of time. Natural catastrophes here and there, human made dramas there and over there... Then you have politics that is really maddening as nothing gets done fast regardless of ideology but boy do the straw-men agitate their grassy appendices...

In short the reason I think time is going way too fast is that we are really busy on stuff that makes absolutely no sense in the grander scheme that our lives.

What say you?

(Stop grinding your teeth)

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Every single thing I do is an essential gear in the grand scheme of things.

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

I disagree, most days are very similar in our family life. Can't do much about natural catastrophes (except plan for them for when they are very close to home (bushfire season is about to start)), and I don't worry much about politics, except to to take note if what some politicians do so I will remember next time an election comes up and vote accordingly.

daddybear Loc: Brunswick, NY

Quite reasonable, actually. I have had a series of health issues. The most serious was a lung transplant, over 6 years ago. By one year 20% of recipients have died. By 5 years the percentage is 50% . So, when your alive you focus on what is really important. Everything else is throw away garbage.

I believe, as you, much too much time wasted on inconsequential activities with no great purpose.

rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

Time is constant but out perception of time is not. As we get older time appears to be going faster, but it is not. When you were 5 years old, 1 year was 1 fifth of your life. When you are 60 years old, one year is one 60th of your life. We just see time differently the more of it we've seen.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

We never see time. We just feel the effects according to your post.

Actually being older time is slower, not faster. As a younger man I was always busy doing this or that. Now that I am less active I can use time to read, enjoy mosquitoes in my yard while trying to grow weeds... I also enjoy having a weekly meal with friends, date my wife more often and so forth... Do note that I do not count mosquitoes as friends...

What I do notice, and it really is not time, is the realization that I lose too much time on other things that makes very little sense.

fergmark Loc: norwalk connecticut

we have clocks going tick tock so that we can coordinate with each other, but we all move through time in our own individual space and time.

SonyBug

Speaking of "bush fires", we are having a natural disaster of calamitous proportions now. Right here in the United States. It seems that hundreds of millions of dollars of marijuana farms are burning up, and nobody to inhale the smoke. Just Wasted. Err, or not wasted as the case may be.

nikon_jon Loc: Northeast Arkansas

Added to what you have said about time moving at faster pace, the principle of relativity. Each segment of time becomes a smaller portion of your total lifetime as you get older. For example, when you are 4 yrs old, each year represents 1/4 of your total lifetime. When you are 50, one year represents 1/50 of your total lifetime. So when you are 4 each year seems longer than when you are 50. This has been given as a reason that time seems to go faster when you get older. Then you have all the garbage being thrown at us every day and we seem to rush headlong toward our final resting place. I think the only thing you can do is slow down and smell the roses. Many of us have learned how to MAKE a living, but have forgotten how to LIVE.

Thruxton Loc: Indiana / California

And I thought "time dilation" was simply part of the aging process. When I was a kid Summers seemed to last forever. Now the days go by so quickly that I can't get caught up on all the things I should do. Maybe it has something to do with an accumulation of memories. When we become overwhelmed by it all we begin to forget.

ricardo7 Loc: Washington, DC - Santiago, Chile

"Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly."

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/496826-dunbar-loved-shooting-skeet-because-he-hated-every-minute-of

tomcat

I agree wholeheartedly that we spend way too much time on inconsequential activities, especially our computers and iPhones. How many more pictures do we need to see of dads on their phones while their kids are playing next to them? I know that we are losing the art of personal conversation, reading too much meaningless trivial junk/spam. I recently dropped two of my 3 internet mailboxes and found myself twiddling my thumbs because I wasn't reading junk. So I started reading more. I also stopped reading every post on our UHH website--sorry guys, but much of what's on there these days is meaningless to me. I found that I was wasting an least 1-2 hours each day on the computer, especially Facebook. So I decided to FB only once per month and see what's posted then. I don't need the latest recipe or store opening or ugly updated pictures of couples eating or on vacation or celebrating something. I actually saw the sunrise this morning!!