Time — the Greatest Roleplay

Youth is impatient. Everything can’t happen fast enough — school days, weeks, the long wait until Friday night. For young minds, time feels endless. Why is that?
Because their minds are explorers. Every sound, every smell, every new experience is a discovery. The brain at that age works like a high-definition recorder, absorbing the world in full colour and surround sound. 

Life feels longer when every moment is filled with new impressions.

But that stage doesn’t last forever.
As habits settle in and days start to repeat themselves, time begins to blur — just as philosopher William James noticed more than a century ago. Once the daily commute, the school bells, or the job routines become familiar, the mind runs on autopilot. And autopilot makes time vanish. And life gets boooooooring. 

Life is like a relationship: once the sparks turn into routine, days and weeks melt together. The stew of repetition makes time fly.

Remember your teenage years?
Your first love, your first bike, your first taste of something completely new — those memories stretch time, because they filled every corner of your attention.

Time, it seems, isn’t linear. It’s proportional.
For a five-year-old, one year is twenty per cent of their entire life; for someone at fifty, it’s just two per cent. Ouch.
So time feels shorter - or flying - the more of it you’ve lived.

We all know the feeling of boredom: the endless wait in a doctor’s office, eyes glued to the slowest second hand in the universe.
And yet, when you’re fully absorbed in something you love — painting, hiking, reading, laughing — the awareness of time disappears completely.
It’s not time that changes. It’s you.

Modern life, of course, has declared war on time. And on you. 
Smartphones, calendars, messages, multitasking — everything speeds up, except the clock itself. No wonder we feel as though time is racing away.

And then there’s monotony — the silent thief of time.
It creeps in when every day looks the same. But monotony can be broken, gently and creatively, by curiosity: learn a new language, take a different route, pick up a forgotten passion.
Curiosity is the enemy of boredom.

The English word mindfulness really means the opposite of what it sounds like — not a “mind full,” but a mind awake.

Personally, I stopped being bored in April 1974.
Staring at the second hand during my apprenticeship drove me mad. My young brain felt sticky, like honey without a spoon.
Since then, curiosity has kept me wide awake. Even at seventy-one, there’s still so much to discover.

Yes, time flies — but only because I keep forgetting to notice it.
Sorry.