There are a lot of scary things about getting older, but the scariest and the weirdest is the change in perception of time. I’ve encountered this idea twice, once in Stephen King’s short story “My Pretty Pony”, and another in the movie “Blue Thunder”. At the time, in late 80s I thought that time “flies” only when you are enjoying something, and “creeps” when you don’t. Saturdays go by faster than Mondays. Turns out, as you get older time picks up pace, everything becomes a blur, good or bad.
Cult 80s movie “Blue Thunder” has this little bit about a helicopter pilot playing with his fancy digital Casio watch that had an interesting analog countdown feature. He was using the watch to test his time perception, claiming that “it was the first thing to go when you go over the edge.”
Watch buffs know this watch as Casio AA-85 and the analog feature as Module 101. I always wanted one of these, and now I finally picked one up on eBay for a song. I know I need it – it seems to me that I am really losing the proper perception of time, it really sped up for me.
In Stephen King’s short story “My Pretty Pony”, an old man is instructing his grandson on the nature of time after watching him lose in a hide and seek game to a kid who counted too fast. He says, that there are three times, only one of which is real. When you are little, it seems that the time goes by very, very slowly. I remember that very distinctly – days were very long, even the summer vacation took forever. Then, when you are about 14, time starts to be “real” – neither slow nor fast. As you get older time picks up pace, only slowing down when you are badly hurt. He called time “a pretty pony with a wicked heart.”
I don’t know about you, but time is definitely speeding much more now than when I was younger. It’s pretty scary.
[Update] Bought on eBay, fixed and even found a similar watch band:
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It’s really scary. Ever since I’ve hit 30, the time has really picked up the pace and every time I blink it’s a month later. I wonder if that’s because the event of living has gotten pretty old and there is nothing that surprises you too much – you look at everything with old eyes. You just stop acknowledging the things and events consciously, they become the background.
Hmm, I just realized that I’ve been thinking about the same problem with time (although in a little different terms) for the past several months. I’ve been thinking about starting to practice meditation on regular basis to tackle the problem of “floating” through life. Meditation (at least the type I am interested in) teaches to be “mindful” or conscious of the current moment, which is incredibly difficult to do, if you ever tried meditating. My thought is that if I can learn to do that well during my official meditation exercises, that awareness of the moments will slowly extend into the rest of my life, making it more rich and fulfilling.
I’ve been reading up on “mindfulness” lately too. Got a book and a cd about it. The cd was interesting, the book – not so much. I’ll write a post about this later. I once achieved what they are speaking of, I was about 14 at the time, and was never able to repeat that experience, although I tried and tried…
Hey, how’s that different from school? Days seemed to be never ending back then.
I have been thinking about time lately as well. One thought is that this is an issue of control. I never control my time any longer. At home, at work, everywhere really, I spend a lot of time reacting, and little time making thoughtful independent decisions.
I don’t enjoy that reactionary time, so my brain attempts to block the memory of it (as it always does with unpleasant experiences). Hence days just flow by, leaving little to remember behind.
I used to have that watch. My dad handed it down when he got a calculator one. My peers were extremely jealous.
Wow, the movie was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw that watch. Actually in Germany it was called “Das fliegende Auge” (the flying eye). Don’t know why they’ve chosen a different name. Nevermind!
Honestly, as a boy I’ve dreamt about this watch and really wanted one of these. Thanks for reminding me! :)
Hearing the words “Blue Thunder watch” immediately reminded me of that scene, as how time is perceived has always fascinated me.
I can highly recommend a 4 part BBC documentary about the subject called “Time”, presented by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. If you ever have the chance, it’s well worth it.
The BBC has some more information about it.
I’ve seen that special. Kaku annoys the hell out of me with his superficial approach to popularizing science. Feynman he ain’t.
My wife and I were just talking about this while on a recent car trip. It was only about an hour long, to us. But we felt bad for our ~1-year old in the back seat. We figured that since he has spent about 1/30th of the time on the outside word that we have, the trip would seem relatively 30x longer for him, or about 30 of his hours long. Our theory is that the longer we live, the faster time appears to go by since each hour/month/decade gradually becomes a shorter percentage of our life over all.
It’s a reversible process: you just have to be mindful of everything around you. Blue Thunder’s pilot used the watch trick, but all you have to do is pay attention.