447. Slowing Down

The older we get, the faster time seems to pass. We usually attribute this change directly to age, thinking it has something to do with the way time is perceived after we have experienced more of life. But while this change is a matter of subjective experience, the speed of time’s passage has a different cause.

We are just as capable in old age of experiencing time as slowly as children do. We know this because time moves as glacially as it ever has when we are actively waiting for some particular event to occur. Time usually moves more quickly for us simply because we are enormously distracted. We have endless responsibilities and obligations to fulfill, and our preoccupation with these things causes time to fly. Genuine boredom is rarely experienced. Every minute of our day is accounted for with some task, even if the task is only to relax and consume media products.

Children are not nearly so preoccupied. They are largely free from the normative world of obligations, which means they are also more attentive to their own needs. This freedom means that children do experience boredom, and they respond to it in the only way appropriate: by creating new and more exciting forms of play.

For us to return to the freedom of childhood, we would need to liberate our attention from the obligations and responsibilities we have accrued. But we cannot fully absolve ourselves of these things, because they are part of our shared social project, which enables the human world in which we live. We must maintain our obligations and also be free of them, which means we must tackle the enormous problem of attachment.

By learning how to release ourselves from attachment, we also learn how to slow down. Not only do we begin to see more of what is happening in and around us, we are also driven to once again explore the creative freedom of play. When we slow down, our experience of time slows with us, and we suddenly realize we have far more of it than we ever imagined.