As we get older, it seems the clock speeds up while we slow down. When children are told dinner is in an hour, they chase the dog, build a castle and watch three episodes of Bluey – all in the time it takes me to wash my hands and get ready to move to the table! For a child, two weeks to Christmas is an agonising eternity, while for us older folk, it means that Christmas is already upon us.
This difference in perception comes down to the fact that two weeks is a tiny fraction of a long life, while for the young, it’s a big percentage of their known lives.
According to the Cambridge University paper ‘Why the Days Seem Shorter as We Get Older’, there’s also a reason why some days seem to pass more slowly than others. ‘The ‘slower’ days are full of productivity, events, and memories of what happened.’ And those productive days? They happen ‘when the body and mind are rested, after periods of regular sleep, when in the morning you look in the mirror and you see a younger you, not a tired you.’ To slow that clock back down, we need to be active, get busy and have many new things in our lives.
