Is it just me or does it seem like every middle-aged adult is telling you, “Don’t blink. Before you know it you’ll be fifty and have grandkids” or “the older you get the faster time goes?”

These are things that I feel like I am constantly hearing so it got me wondering, why is that so? Why does it feel like time is getting faster? Even though I’ve only lived 22 years, I can testify to the fact that every year is getting quicker and quicker. I began thinking and talking to a few friends and really just came up with two main half-baked ideas.

One idea that I have come up with is that it is all related to math. I know, math is polarizing – people love it or hate it – I am just asking you to try and follow me here. The TV show “Numbers” begins by saying that math is a concept that is everywhere, it is embedded in creation as well as in our interactions with the world and each other. When I was in school math was my favorite subject, I excelled mightily in it. Time is something that is intertwined with math. There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, etc. I can go on and on. Time is a concept we have all grown up around.

When you were 10 years old, didn’t it seem like a year took forever? Life was so slow and we had all the time in the world. I just turned 21, my 20^th year flew by, it seemed like it went twice as fast as it did when I was 10. What if I told you it did go by twice as fast? Think I’m crazy? Let me explain.

When you were 10, one year was exactly 10% of your life. Correct? (Reader nods head in agreement). When I was 20 a year was exactly 5% of my life. Follow my drift? My time on this earth is longer and therefore makes just a year seem shorter and shorter. If I can fast forward a few years to when I am 50 (if I live that long), a year will be exactly 2% of my life and I can only imagine how quickly it will go by. Now I understand what all of these old timers are talking about. That is my first half-baked idea, whether or not you followed it, it makes sense to me!

Now, for Mason’s half-baked idea number 2! It is a little crazier so buckle up. It originates from a podcast I listened to by Branden Harvey that features Jedidiah Jenkins (I will put the link at the bottom) called The Adventure of Curiosity. It is only an hourish long so I encourage you to go listen to it because it will be explained a lot clearer than I will be able to explain it in this summary. Anyways, in short, the theory is one that says that our brains are really good at picking up on patterns. For example, chairs have all shapes and sizes. Some have a high back, some have arm rests, some are stools, they are different colors and they are always changing. When I walk into a dining room and see a wooden chair with armrests, I don’t have to think about what it is, I don’t think it’s a monster, I know exactly what it is right away without even paying attention to it. I have lived long enough to know what a chair looks like as a general rule of thumb.

Our brains pick up on these patterns and observations and go on auto-pilot. This is a good feature that God created in us because it allows us to have the sense of when something isn’t right, of when something is out of the norm. There are stories all over the internet of people who just sensed something was off and they were able to save a life or something spectacular. Our brains are truly amazing. That being said, our brains recognizing patterns and going on auto-pilot isn’t always good. Many of us have a daily routine, and it causes weeks to fly by. I remember being in high school and I would wake up, go to school, go to a sports practice, come home do homework, eat, go to bed and then wake up and repeat it all over again. Days flew by. In college, I would go to class, go to work, stay up late writing papers, and take a nap (if going to sleep at night only lasts 4 hours I count it as a nap). Routines aren’t bad, that isn’t what I’m saying. But do you remember when you were 12 and your summer break felt like it lasted a lifetime? You were taking on new experiences and seeing new things and doing new things and life felt like it was on pause. I think that we need to get back to that.

Last year for a few months I travelled around the country and lived out of a van and it has felt like it was for a few years. I was travelling through about 12-15 different states and just seeing new things, doing new things and became addicted to new experiences. My brain is a muscle and I am working it out, exercising it and time seemed to have slowed. I became more intentional about life and it seems like time has slowed down and I have more of it. Lately it seems as if I have gotten back into a routine in life and it is something I am working on getting out of, working on getting back to that addiction of new things, new experiences.

Don’t we all wish we had more time throughout the day?

I have stopped wasting time on Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram and other social media sites and have started spending it wisely and intentionally. In the Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes talks a lot about how “there is a time for everything”. And about how “everything is meaningless”, that word meaningless in the original Hebrew (the Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek) is better defined as like a breath, as being here today and gone tomorrow. Whenever I think about or read the book of Ecclesiastes I think of an hourglass. I love an hourglass because, to me, it is a visualization of time. It is like watching seconds go by and it reminds me to be present. I can never get the sand that has passed through back and no matter how much I want to; I can’t make remaining sand pass through any faster. No matter what I do or want to do, I cannot change the process. This realization of my smallness and insignificance brings me to a point of humility and causes me to try to rejoice and find the beauty in the present.

If we were to live intentionally and be present in the moment; maybe, just maybe time won’t seem to fly by as fast. Who knows, maybe I am wrong. Regardless, I would love to hear your thoughts – feel free to give me a shout!

Be present. Live in the now.

Shalom friends.