![]() Remember how long summer vacation seemed as a kid? And, ironically, as we get older larger chunks of time like decades seem to fly faster than smaller chunks like days or minutes. We generally feel that our moments become more fleeting as we get older. This feeling of time speeding up or slowing down happens in a lot of areas of life. Understanding them won’t make that whooshing feeling go away, exactly, but it can make it less painful. Is this feeling of time whistling past inevitable? Scientists have uncovered startling insights about how the brain registers the passage of time. ![]() Somewhere, we crested the top, but there was no coasting, only a whooshing that I can’t slow down. Now, as she stretches from the roundness of a baby toward the long gazelle lines of a pre-teen, I feel that we have somehow accelerated too fast. It felt like climbing uphill in anticipation of that time when we could coast. The days stretched out too, as I wished for the time when she could be entertained on her own by a toy or a cartoon, for even a few minutes. In her first year, the sleepless nights were eternities passed under the glowing blue rectangles of an LCD clock. Surely every parent has suffered the same pains I’m feeling as my daughter turns 9. And there are few experiences more subjective than the experience of time. I am a social psychologist who studies how people’s minds shape their subjective experiences. Or more precisely, a new understanding of how my perception of time is warped by the brain. ![]() With sympathy for my family, the truth is that my favorite Father’s Day gift this year has been the gift of time. But I have an annoying habit of buying useful gadgets as I need them, leaving my relatives to purchase paper bags specially designed for storing cheese, say, or devices that carve vegetables into the shape of noodles. I enjoy cooking, which would seem to open up some possibilities. ![]() My socks are all the same, in the interest of efficiency. I’m one of those men for whom it is impossible to find Father’s Day gifts. This story originally featured on The Conversation. Keith Payne is a professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |