As we age, the passage of time seems to accelerate. This is a mere seeming since, if time passes at all, which itself may be a mere seeming, time presumably passes at a constant rate. When we are young, the evanescence of our lives does not strike us. But to us on the far side of middle age the fluxious fugacity of this life is all too apparent.
Why does time’s tempo seem to speed up as the years roll on?
Part of the explanation must be that there is less change and more stasis from decade to decade. Dramatic changes in body and mind and environment occur in the first two decades of life. You go from womb to world, and from helpless infant to cocky youth. Your horizon expands from the family circle to the wide world.
In the third decade, biological growth over with, one typically finishes one’s education and gets settled in a career. But there are still plenty of changes. From ages 20 to 30, I lived in about 15 different places in California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Austria, and Germany, studied at half a dozen universities, and worked as a guitar player, logger, tree planter, furniture mover, factory worker, mailman, taxi driver, exterminator, grave digger, and philosophy professor.
But from 30 to 40, I lived in only five different places with exactly one job, and from 40 to 50 in three places, and from age 50 to the present I have had exactly one permanent address. And it won’t be long before I have exactly one address that is permanent in the absolute as opposed to the relative sense.
Tempus? Fugit!