Life is passing by so fast

The years have passed much faster than I ever realised that they would. A week now feels like a day, as does a month or a year. Each day slips by faster than the day before.

Many of my retired friends wonder how fast the years go by. They feel that time just flies. This feeling seems to be true across cultures, time, and the world!

It’s normal to feel like time speeds up the older you get. When we were teenagers, time seemed never-ending, and as we grew into young adults, we found that even half an hour looked like an age.

Days and nights seem to be shorter, and our watch goes faster than it used to. Birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays are going to seem like they’re racking up more and more quickly. It’s another year and another Eid or Christmas around the corner in a blink.

Here, I am not attempting to dispute the biologist's claim that when you get older, the metabolic process in the body starts slowing down. So time does not get faster, but the process in the body gets slower and slower.

I am not debating the mathematical or psychological explanation as to why we think time goes faster as we get older.

When I was young, I had never been bothered by the passing of the years or my youth. But now I bother, not for me, but for my children, who are slowly becoming old. My children turned 34 and 30, and I can’t still believe it.

After about 25 years, time really seems to go faster. Those years passed so fast—much faster than I ever realised they would. True, as we get older, we feel the passage of time due to the relative proportion of time in our lives.

A scientific explanation for this is that our brains process less information as we grow older, which makes time seem to speed up.

Researchers suggest that the biggest factor that influences our perception of time is motivation. "When we are motivated to approach something, we will perceive time passing faster", they say.

However, time is relative to how you measure it. None of us knows how much time we have, but, interestingly, we do actually have a lot of control over how we experience that time. I know good things come along with getting older, and that the future is filled with possibilities.

For myself, I can say that life has passed at just about the speed necessary. It’s been two years since I retired. The days are going by very fast. I get up, do a few things, and suddenly it’s evening.

My career as a working journalist spanned nearly four decades. When I finally retired, I was ready for a rest, and rest is what I do, including my regular habit of reading and writing.

As a grandfather, I try to spend time with my two grand kids. I love to see the two little angels coming home and spending time with them. My life now feels like it moves at a leisurely pace by comparison.

In conclusion, I do what I want. I sleep when I feel like it, I wake up when I want, and rarely ever set an alarm. I have no deadline to meet, it’s a deadline set by me, not by someone else.

However, time can be influenced by a variety of factors, often different for different individuals. The fact is that time itself is unaffected by it. It just keeps ticking along like it always has. It’s a journey from one moment to the next.