March 2021

The other day I was on a bike ride. As my front tire rolled over pavement, my eyes traced over sidewalks and asphalt. Nestled into one of the cracks was a used up joint. Wonder how that got there, I thought. And then, as so often happens, a second thought out of nowhere made landfall in the port of my head: You know when I was 16 I would have been like whoa a joint! Oh my gosh how scary. 

This thought led to another, one which I think is quite an insight. How interesting that now, to me, a joint is basically irrelevant. But when I was 16 and was first introduced to ~scary~ drugs, it was a whole thing. Something to be secretive about, something to talk to about, something new. 

I think this has something to do with the surface area of your life to date. At the age of 16, the surface area of your experiences is rather limited. Each new thing brings about a whole mass of uncharted territory. The fractional addition of each day diminishes over time. Think of it this way: when you are 1, a day to you is 1/365th of your entire life – a huge deal! But when you are 30, it’s just 1/10,950th. This line of thinking is related to something my boyfriend recently said. Life seems to go faster and faster as we age because each day is incrementally a less big piece of our lives than the day prior. I think there’s some truth in that and additional explanations are found in quite a few studies. I’ve quoted one here:

This phenomenon, which Hammond has dubbed the holiday paradox, seems to present one of the best clues as to why, in retrospect, time seems to pass more quickly the older we get. From childhood to early adulthood, we have many fresh experiences and learn countless new skills. As adults, though, our lives become more routine, and we experience fewer unfamiliar moments. As a result, our early years tend to be relatively overrepresented in our autobiographical memory and, on reflection, seem to have lasted longer. Of course, this means we can also slow time down later in life. We can alter our perceptions by keeping our brain active, continually learning skills and ideas, and exploring new places.

– Scientific American

Of course our lives are not so perfectly linear. Not everyday is worth what the previous day was proportionally minus the denominator’s growth. A day that challenges us, that is new, that makes us feel like a beginner again. Those days seem to be valued in our memories more, weighted heavier in the accounting of our lives than days-of-routine. I’ve not been explicit in my goal to attain newness in each day but I think, perhaps inadvertently, I’ve prioritized this. New and different food to cook, new and different music to listen to, new and different books, new and different places to travel to. I find a lot of joy in newness and even though feeling like a beginner so often can be very ego-limiting, I find a lot of joy in that as well. If this also has the side-effect of slowing down my perception of time, then all the better 🙂 Cheers to a longer life!

– theMonthlyJamm | March 28, 2021

PS: Recommendation thanks to Christina for Go to Town!