You probably don’t remember the exact moment this happened, but at one point in your life, time stopped feeling like something you painstakingly make your way through and started feeling like something that rushes past you.
I remember the first time I wished time would go faster. I was ten and I had just seen a picture of my mum’s youngest co-worker. He was beautiful and I thought I was in love. For reasons beyond my current comprehension, but which I’m sure made perfect sense at the time, I decided that I would have to wait nine years for us to get married. This gives you some insight into my ten-year-old idea of what was an appropriate age to marry and an appropriate age gap.
Now, twenty years later, my life couldn’t be any more different than I imagine it would be at ten. For starters, the idea of getting married at nineteen sounds like something out of a Victorian novel. It also looks like I might end up marrying someone younger than me. But above all, my relationship with time has been turned on its head.
A few years ago, I came across this article about the way our perception of time changes as we grow older. The theory goes that the more years you’ve experienced the shorter a year will feel because you’re constantly comparing time units to your total life span. So it makes sense that one year feels like a very long time when you’re a child - you’ve only experienced a few of them!
Whenever I think about my summer holidays, the first thing I remember is that they seemed to go on forever. I grew up in my grandparents’ village. That area of southern Romania is completely flat and when you walked out of the village and into the nearest field, there were no buildings or hills obstructing the view. It was just fields of barley and scorched grass going on for as far as the eye could see. I sometimes felt like if I kept on walking I would eventually arrive at the exact spot where the sky met the earth. Eventually, I learned what the horizon was and discovered that wasn’t possible - science really does suck all the magic out of life.
But I think that part of the reason why I was convinced I could walk to the end of the Earth if I wanted to, was related to my perception of time as much as it was to an optical illusion. On the hottest summer days, when everyone sought shelter from the sun for a couple of hours and even the insects retired to their cool underground burrows, it truly felt like time stood still - stretched even. I felt like I could walk to the end of the world in one afternoon.
Then, a switch flipped. Sometime in my late teens to early twenties, there was suddenly no time left. Between working and studying and pursuing hobbies and working out and socializing and falling in love. Suddenly, most things I did every day left the indefinite shape of afternoons spent in a field trying to coax bugs out of the dirt to take on the recognizable shape of little rectangular slots in a digital calendar. As I grew older, I struggled not to get crushed between the weight of all the things I wanted to accomplish and the cold, hard, immovable surface of the 24-hour days, 7-day weeks, 365 (sometimes even less!!)-day years.
I hate to be this person who blames capitalism for everything, but it’s hard to ignore how much of the modern fight against time is to do with consumption. We rush to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible to avoid feeling left out when everyone we know is out at festivals or posting about their lavish dinners or holidays on some far-away island. We want the house and the car and the job title, because what if you bump into that friend from uni - who is really not your friend and actually makes you feel really insecure - and have nothing to brag about?
The article I mentioned earlier does a great job outlining the psychological dimension of time but says nothing about the psycho-social. It doesn’t acknowledge that moving back in with your parents for a year or two after the age of 25 feels like a complete and utter failure, instead of the gift it should feel like. Because trust me, having parents to go to, who will welcome you, whose house feels like a safe place to you is a gift.
The article doesn’t acknowledge how much of a waste two years put into the wrong relationship can feel like. Or just how old 30 feels in a society built on milestones that are getting increasingly unrealistic in the current political and economic climate. A house? A child? By 30? In this economy?
At the same time, we’re bombarded with content advertising slow living, and making time for oneself which is so far removed from the daily realities of the average person, that you have to ask yourself: whose nepo baby wrote this?
So where does this leave us? I realize that the title I chose for this post insinuates some sort of guide or at least some final word of wisdom. Well, I lied. I have no idea. I don’t know how to stop rushing through my days or how not to feel overwhelmed by the gargantuan size of my dreams and the disproportionate amount of time I have to dedicate to them. Perhaps I’ll give up on all of it and live the rest of my days in a shed with my dog. Or maybe I’ll give into the grind mindset, buy a subscription to whichever manfluencer took Andrew Tate’s place as the president of the school of life, and try not to think about it too much. I really hope you didn’t open this post hoping for actual advice.