Jason E. Andersen

August has flown by! We’re halfway through already and I feel like it was July only a couple days ago. It turns out this feeling is a common thing, especially amongst those of the elder ages. 

Bonus Fun Fact: As we age, our perception of the world slows down, resulting in time appearing to pass more quickly. Your brain is constantly interpreting information from the world around you (I hope). As you age, the rate at which your brain processes that information slows down. The change happens very gradually, so you don’t notice. You just continue living your life like everything is normal (because it is). At these increasingly slower processing rates, you aren’t able to take in all the inputs as quickly as you could when you were younger. As this happens, you perceive that events happen more quickly and that time passes faster. Seriously, it’s a real thing.

Imagine the guy in his 80’s driving his Buick 20 miles under the speed limit. You know the guy I’m talking about. Me in my 40’s, I look at that guy driving and wonder he’s doing driving so slowly. He looks at me and wonders why I’m driving like a maniac, going so fast. My driving skill aside, a big factor in that difference is how the two of us perceive time differently. Relatively, we each think that we are travelling at a normal and respectable rate of speed. However, because the two of us process information at different speeds, and therefore perceive time differently, we curse at each other on the roadway.

I don’t have any real reasons this happens, as scientists don’t really know. It is, however, a widely experienced phenomenon, if not very well understood. Something cool to think about if nothing else, and an excuse for you to use when a month slips away without you noticing.