The Counting Years

As a child, I was always impatient.  My brother, three years my senior, always seemed to have just a slight edge over me -- a few more privileges than I had, and I wanted the same.   I couldn't wait to turn seven if it meant my bedtime was extended by a half hour.  Each year seemed to mark some right of passage, until I entered my teen years and literally felt I would burst at the seams -- timed seemed to tick on so slowly, and I couldn't wait to drive, then drive after nine, turn eighteen, turn twenty-one and so on.  I couldn't wait to get out of high school and into college.  Then I couldn't wait to get out of college and work only one, really great paying job, instead of three crappy ones.

Once I hit and surpassed all of these sought-after milestone years, I found myself looking around, as a single woman in my twenties, asking, what's next?  The milestones were now mile markers, strewn throughout my past, and fading in the distance as I looked back on what had brought me where I was today.  What was there left to count down to?

It was then I coined the phrase "the counting years," those tumultuous years filled with growing pains and life lessons that we were all so anxious to conquer.  But, once we have emerged the victor, what's left?

Now times speeds by much too quickly.  My children have aged at warp speed it seems, and now I wish I could find an anchor to slow down this speeding ship we're on.  Why does time move so slowly when we are young, and so quickly as we age?  I dread my looming birthday and each one after that, fearing the new milestones -- turning forty, then fifty, then, if it's still around, collecting social security.

Why does time fly?  According to some scientists, it all has to do with perception:

The experience of time is not linear. Fear and joy stretch time as do stimuli that move towards us. When we experience something as “taking a long time” it is really the result of three inter-twined processes: the actual duration of the event, how we feel about the event, and whether we think the event is approaching us. 

So basically, if we are waiting for an event to happen three months from now, those three months seem to come upon us much quicker than we are prepared.  However, looking back on an event that took place three months in the past, we can hardly remember it because it seemed so long ago...

In fact, some investigators have suggested that the amount of energy spent during thinking and experiencing defines the subjective experience of duration.  In other words, the more energy it takes to process a stimulus the longer it appears as a subjective experience of time.  Something moving toward you has more relevance than the same stimulus moving away from you:  You may need to prepare somehow; time seems to move more slowly.

We can never fully prepare for the events that will occur in our lifetime, but, can we slow down the impending passage of time if we change our perceptions of the events in our future?  Can we create a new set of Counting Years?