Why Does Adulthood Seem to Fly By?
The last few weeks of school seemed to drag on for so long, and Summer vacation felt like its own little lifetime.
Of course, waiting for your birthday or Christmas could feel almost impossible!
... Now somehow September becomes December in about fifteen minutes.
So what happened?
Why does childhood seem so long when we look back on it, while entire years of adulthood can feel like they disappeared?
*** There isn’t one simple answer, but psychologists have a few interesting explanations.
~~~ Childhood Is Full of Firsts ~~~
When you’re young, almost everything is new.
Your first day of school, first sleepover, your first trip somewhere new, and learning to ride a bike are all first-time things in our lives; You're meeting new friends, trying new foods, going to your first concert, and getting your first job, among a slew of other things!
New experiences tend to create more distinctive memories than things we’ve done hundreds of times before.
As adults, life often becomes more predictable. We drive the same roads, go to the same workplace, shop at the same stores and follow roughly the same weekly routine.
When we look back, periods filled with lots of distinct memories can feel longer than stretches in which one day blended into the next. Researchers studying time perception have suggested that this difference in memory may be one reason childhood seems so expansive in retrospect.
~~~ Our Brains Remember Certain Years Especially Well ~~~
There’s something psychologists call the “reminiscence bump.”
Studies of autobiographical memory have repeatedly found that adults tend to recall a disproportionately large number of memories from adolescence and early adulthood, often roughly between ages 10 and 30.
It makes sense, as those are often the years when we’re figuring out who we are, becoming more independent, and experiencing major life transitions.
We're going to school, have our first relationships, heading off to college, and moving away from home. We are starting careers, building friendships, discovering music, movies, and other interests that become part of our identity.
**Researchers are still debating exactly why the reminiscence bump happens, but those formative years seem to occupy an unusually large amount of space in our personal stories.
~~~ Routine Can Compress Time ~~~
Think about two different weekends...
During one weekend you stay home, run errands, watch TV, and do basically the same things you usually do.
But during another weekend, you travel somewhere you’ve never been, try a new restaurant, explore a neighborhood and do something completely unfamiliar.
What's interestingly, the busy trip might feel like it flies by while you’re actually experiencing it.
But when you look back a month later, that weekend can feel surprisingly substantial because you have so many individual moments to remember.
... Meanwhile, the routine weekend may barely register!
This strange contradiction is one reason researchers distinguish between how fast time feels while we’re living it and how long that same period feels when we remember it later.
~~~ A Year Also Becomes a Smaller Part of Your Life ~~~
There’s another popular explanation that is less about memory and more about perspective.
When you’re five years old, one year represents a huge portion of your entire life.
... But at 40, one year is comparatively small.
That doesn’t necessarily mean our brains are literally calculating percentages every time another birthday rolls around. But it helps explain why the distance between birthdays can feel so enormous to a child and increasingly ordinary to an adult.
We simply have much more life behind us to compare it with.
~~~Being Busy Changes Things Too ~~~
Adulthood also comes with schedules filled with work, appointments, bills, errands, family obligations, and deadlines.
Instead of waiting impatiently for Friday to arrive, we often find ourselves wondering how Friday got here already.
Psychologist Ruth Ogden has noted that adults commonly report feeling as though they never have enough time, and that constant sense of trying to keep up may contribute to the feeling that time is passing faster.
--->> Can We Make Life Feel Longer Again?
We obviously can’t return to childhood, but we can borrow something from it and try new things...
* Go somewhere you haven’t been.
* Take a class.
* Learn something you’re terrible at.
* Cook something unfamiliar.
* Say yes to an invitation you would normally turn down.
The goal isn’t to cram every moment with activity... It’s to give your brain more moments that stand apart from one another.
A completely ordinary Tuesday tends to disappear into all the other Tuesdays.
The Tuesday when you tried pottery for the first time, went to a comedy show, painted a picture, saw a band you’d never heard of or met someone new has a better chance of sticking around.
... And maybe that’s one of the lessons hidden inside that strange feeling that childhood lasted forever.
We may not be able to slow the clock, but we can give ourselves more things worth remembering.