Thursday, December 12, 2019
Nigohosian 4, The Concept of Time
The Concept of Time
After looking at some blog posts about time over the weeks, there has been one question lingering in the back of my mind. I always wondered, why does time seem to go by so fast? After doing some research, I’ve found an answer and its surprising at how simple the concept really is. Santosh Kesari, MD, Ph.D., neurologist, neuro-oncologist, neuroscientist and chair of the Department of Translational Neurosciences and Neurotherapeutics at the John Wayne Cancer Institute, explains that it is our memories that influence the perception of time. Its also worth noting that this perception is based on retrospective perception, which is remembered time instead of real-time.
For example, time seems to go by slowly when we were younger, but when we look back on those years, they seem to have been a blur. This is because we largely gauge retrospective time by memorable events, and we tend to have fewer of them as time goes on. During our childhood, we absorb everything going on around us and take them in as new experiences, but as we get older, we have increasingly less new experiences. Due to these fewer experiences, time seems to go by much faster as our mind is not creating as many new experiences. Also, more routine activities do not get recorded as memories, so it is better to be more spontaneous with your decisions if you want to make something seem like it lasted longer. For example, if you want to remember a vacation or long weekend better, do a wider variety of activities to make it seem longer when you look back on those days.
Another reason why time may seem shorter when you look back on it is how much time you have spent so far in your life. The more time you spend in your life, the smaller the percentage of certain things seem, so it may also be based on perspective. Someone who has lived for 10 years definitely has less to remember than someone who has lived for 20 or 30 years. In general, time is something precious that can never be taken back, so make the best of it when you can.
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When I look back at my entire high school career, it seems like it was just a month ago I was in some of my ninth grade english classes. Time seems to have flown by through all two years that I have completed. However, when I was in the ninth grade english classes, it seemed like it would never come to an end.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up an interesting point about how younger people have less memory than older people. I can not remeber what happend 10 years ago, when I was 7, but a older adult could definetly have a better recolection of 10 years ago than I could.
Oh this is kinda scary, but it also makes perfect sense. I was reading this and I decided to look back on my day as a whole and it seems like it went by so fast. I was awake and then I did one thing and another thing and boom here I am typing this before I go to bed. I know, in reality though, that the activities I was doing actually did seem to take a long time but now it really is just a blur. I was singing at a recital today and I remember waiting in the chairs for a while thinking, "this is taking forever!" Now though, it seemed so fast looking back on it. I never thought about it the way that Kesari described it but it seems to make perfect sense now.
ReplyDeleteThis is something I've thought about before. For a ten year old, one year is 10% of their entire life, and would therefore feel like a very long time. For someone who is 100, on the other hand, one year is only 1% of their life. For comparison, 1% of a 10 year old's life is *calculator noises* about a month. According to your theory, that would mean that a month for a 10 year old feels the same as a year does for a 100 year old. Quite honestly, hat's terrifying.
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