The speed of life

As you get older and older, time passes faster and faster. I find this to be definitely true for myself. When I was a kid, waiting in a queue for something was pure torture, if I was caught in a supermarket line or stuck waiting in a government office I would feel like digging my eyes out with a spoon.

But now if you ask me to wait in line, I can actually close my eyes and relax for awhile. For some reason it doesn't seem as much like hell as before. Perhaps time really does slow down. But why should time slow down as we get older? Some say that we measure time by how much we have lived; a one year-old measures a year as his whole life, practically an eternity, a ten-year old measures it as one-tenth of his life, still a long time, while for a fifty year old it passes in the blink of an eye as it is merely a fiftieth.


Now I know why my dad is fine with boring television shows, they go by much faster for him than for me.

The thought of life running by faster and faster does comfort me when I'm standing in line or doing boring documentation work... yet when I think of being pushed to the grave faster and faster the thought does seem a little disturbing. Doesn't that mean that I won't have much time with my grandkids from my perspective?

So now I know why my dad is asking me when am I going to find a girl, he's worrying about time spent with his grandkids too.

However perhaps the accelerating passage of time for us humans may be a good thing. If we think of life as a movie, wouldn't the fact that the last 5 minutes pass faster than the first 5 mean that the movie was, generally speaking, an interesting one? If the last 5 minutes passed slower than the first 5, that would indicate a pretty boring movie.

So in this brief flight of time between cradle and heaven, we all enjoy a decent ride at least.

And maybe that is all that matters.