THE PERCEPTION OF TIME

You may have noticed that for our children, time never passes, whereas for us, it passes quickly, more and more as we get older. Think also of how many times you have uttered phrases such as ‘the weekend flew by in a flash’, ‘today in the office, time did not never passed’, ‘I waited for the bus for an eternity’…

 What is the reason for the different, entirely subjective perception of time? It is not so simple to answer this question. Philosophers and scientists have been trying for centuries, yet a truly convincing explanation has yet to be formulated, even though our whole life is marked and organised according to time. Today, neuroscience speaks of a different way of storing events by the region of the brain called the hippocampus, which records new but not repetitive experiences. The younger one is, the more one’s life is full of novelty and significant events, so that time expands; as one gets older, one very often leads a more habitual existence, without events that arouse wonder. In these circumstances, the days are almost all the same, and so are the weeks and months, and time ‘flies’, leaving an unpleasant feeling of boredom and monotony.

 So perhaps, in this case, it is our children who can teach us something, namely the right attitude to never lose, characterised by curiosity and an openness to the world. We have countless possibilities to enrich our lives with novelty and keep our perception of time younger: we can read a book, visit a museum, take a trip to a country we do not know, attend a course, try a new restaurant…