Where is this year going?"
How many times have you either said or heard that recently?
It seems like the 4th of July was just a few weeks ago and now we're trying to figure out what to do for Thanksgiving. Football season is nearly half over. The stores are an eclectic mess with Halloween decorations and front lawn Santas displayed side by side.
If it seems that time is passing quickly, you're right.
According to an article in Inc. Magazine, research shows that our brain's internal clock runs more slowly as we age, giving us the impression that life is speeding up.
Other research offers that the perceived passage of time is related to the amount of new information we absorb. When we're young, pretty much everything is new, which means we have more to process thus making time seem longer. As we get older, less and less is new.
There's still other scientific work that suggests that the release of dopamine starts to drop past the age of 20, which also makes time appear to go by quicker.
I'll never forget one summer when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. The days seemed to be lasting forever and I was getting bored. I complained about my boredom one night to my Dad when he came home from work. He told me: "Enjoy all this time while you have it. Some day you'll wonder where it all went." Now maybe that's a bit strong to say to a little kid, but I've always remembered it.
There is one thing that always seem to go by quickly, no matter how young or old you are: vacation.
It seems that you just arrive and it's time to go.
When my in-laws got a small place in Clearwater, Florida, we didn't understand the fascination. As we've gotten older, we've seen the light. We've just come back from our latest trip -- and it seems like we went months ago. We're already trying to figure out when we can get back and how much longer we can stay.
We love Cape Cod, but Florida is pretty cool, too.
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