Why Time Feels Faster When We Age
The Brain, Relativity, and The Rushing River of Memory
Where Did the Year Go?
You blink…and summer’s gone.
You open your eyes…and another birthday arrives.
Time, once an endless summer, now seems to sprint.
And no, it’s not just in your head.
Or maybe it is, but not the way you think.
From the curves of Einstein’s relativity to the quiet rewiring of your neural patterns, science offers answers.
And they all say the same strange thing:
Time doesn’t just pass…it stretches, shrinks, and shimmers depending on how we move through it.
Let’s step into that ripple. Together.
Children Count Days. Adults Count Years.
Remember how long it took for Christmas to arrive when you were seven?
Each day was an era.
Each week an odyssey.
Summer lasted forever.
Now?
It’s November before you’ve unpacked the beach chairs.
So what happened?
Your brain’s perception of time changed. Not the ticking of the clock, but the way your mind records and recalls experience.
The Novelty Effect: Why Routine Speeds Things Up
Our brains are fantastic storytellers, and they only record the new, the surprising, the vivid.
A first kiss lingers longer than the hundredth
A trip to a new country stretches time
Brushing your teeth, again, again, again? Your brain barely logs it
As we age, we fall into routine.
Wake up. Work. Eat. Scroll. Sleep.
The brain, in its quest for efficiency, stops recording these loops in detail.
And when you look back?
There’s less “data.”
Less color.
Less depth.
So the months compress.
As you wrote in your piece about how time isn’t linear, memory doesn’t stack like books…it spirals, fades, echoes.
Relativity: Einstein Was Right, Too
Even beyond psychology, physics whispers its agreement.
In Einstein’s theory of relativity, time slows for things in motion and speeds up for those at rest.
Clocks on satellites tick differently than clocks on Earth.
Time bends under gravity.
It stretches with acceleration.
So in a very real sense, time is subjective.
It’s a fabric. And how we move through it changes its shape. I haven’t believed time to be linear since my trauma.
Now pair that with your internal tempo (your awareness, your novelty, your routine), and you begin to see:
Time isn’t just measured.
It’s felt.
The 1% Rule: How Age Changes Proportion
Here’s the brutal math:
To a 5-year-old, one year is 20% of their life
To a 50-year-old, it’s only 2%
We measure time relatively.
So every new year feels shorter…not because it is, but because it’s a smaller slice of your growing memory pie.
That’s why your first love feels epic, your first heartbreak eternal…and last Tuesday? Already gone.
Time Feels Fast When We Stop Paying Attention
Let’s get poetic for a moment:
Time doesn’t rush.
We stop noticing it.
When every day blurs into the next, your brain doesn’t pause long enough to say:
“Let’s make this one count.”
You fall into default.
And default is the enemy of time’s richness.
But novelty? Awe? Presence?
Those are time’s antidotes.
As you explored in your article about soundwaves, vibration and attention shape the world more than we realize.
You Can Slow Time Again. Here’s How.
Want time to stretch again? To soften?
Try this:
Travel somewhere new, even in your own city
Eat with your hands once in a while
Watch the moon rise and do nothing else
Change your route home
Novelty creates memory density.
The more you notice, the more the brain records.
And the more it records, the longer the moment feels.
Make Memories Stick With This Simple Tool
If you want to really stretch time, journal even a few sentences a day.
Or use a digital prompt journal like this guided memory keeper.
Why?
Because recalling memories (reconjuring detail) makes the brain relive them.
It’s not nostalgia. It’s neuroplasticity.
You don’t even need a notebook. You can write one good thing that happened to you every day and put it in a mason jar. At the end of the year you would have an uplifting summary of your year.
The Time of the Body vs. the Time of the Soul
We age on paper.
In bone.
In skin.
But the inner clock?
That one’s trickier.
It runs on emotion, awe, attention.
A single hour of grief can stretch like weeks.
A weekend of joy can flash by like lightning.
So maybe it’s not about slowing down the clock…
But about expanding our awareness inside of it.
Maybe aging isn’t loss of youth.
Maybe it’s the invitation to live wider.
You Can Dance With Time
You don’t need to chase time or fear it.
Try instead to:
Reignite wonder
Change your rituals
Say “yes” to things that scare you just a little
Because fear, excitement, uncertainty, those are time amplifiers.
They tell the brain:
“This matters. Record this one. Hold it tight.”
Time Doesn’t Pass, We Do
Time isn’t a thief.
It’s a river.
A mirror.
A mystery.
And if you feel it speeding up, don’t panic.
That means you’ve lived.
Now go live some more…deliberately.
Let the calendar spin.
But you?
You can choose to notice every petal, every pause, every pattern in the sky.
