Ask McFartnuggets: “Why Does Time Speed Up As You Get Older?”

This is time.

Dear McFartnuggets: 

Why does time speed up as you get older? It’s not fair! From age 1 to 13 felt like it took forever and yet the past two decades have gone by in about five hours. I’m already 43-years-old and have nothing to show for my life because it’s going by too damn fast! What the hell is going on? What is this? -- Ross from Baltimore

Dear Ross:

Time isn’t really going faster, it just seems that way because the older you get the more bored you become. When you’re a kid everything is new to you so each experience feels longer because you’re trying to take it all in. Your awareness as a young person is at its absolute peak. Once you get into a routine of life you start glossing over the same boring crap that keeps on happening so when you look back to reflect on it it seems as though nothing has happened because you weren’t fully aware while it was happening. You think you were paying attention, but since it’s all the same old stuff you’ve been doing there are no new experiences to give it substantial weight in your mind. When you were a kid all your memories were substantial and when you compare recent memories to those from the past they appear much lighter and quicker. When you condense years of adult boredom with only a few memorable moments together in years they have about as much weight as a day or week when you were a child. Time is all a matter of perception and as we grow older our perception warps and makes us seem like death is speeding up as it gets closer and closer. And it’s not fair at all especially considering how when you try to stay young by acting like a child everyone thinks you’re a freak. There’s just no winning!

If that first visual aid confused you, think of time more as a Gabriel's Horn. 

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