Understanding time as a fluid component of your life will bring you better appreciation for the motto: seize the day! Time is not something we should always measure with clocks and calendars. Time is a relative experience in our life. It is fluid. And the more you appreciate this, the more you will appreciate the need to seize the hour, not just to seize the day.
Everyone over the age of twelve notices that summers seem to get shorter every year. Have you ever wondered why that is?
At age ten, you had been on the earth for only 3650 days. But most of us don’t remember the first year or two of our lives, so it was more like 3000 days. So 90 days of summer was a full 3 percent of your entire lifetime. (For your first summer vacation, at age six, summer was more like 6 percent of your lifetime – twice as long!)
At age 30, those same 90 days are only 0.88 percent of your lifetime. If you were to perceive time as a ten year old again, summer vacation would last nearly a whole year.
At age 80, those 90 days are less than one third of one percent of your life. At this point of your timeline, a ten year old’s summer would be equivalent to 854 days – more than 28 months of summer vacation!
The following graph shows you the devaluation of time as we grow older, using a base of a 90-day summer for a 10-year-old.
Reflecting on your own life as you look at this graph, consider your past understanding of time as a child, and the conception of time for people who are older than you.
For myself, I recall with fascination that summer seemed to stretch forever and a day. As well, when I was 12, each summer day was segmented by lunchtime. Each morning and each afternoon were packed with adventure for me and my friends. And how strange it seems now that any quarrels had between us in the morning were always wiped clean when we all emerged outdoors again after lunch. (It was not an agreement we had, nor even a silent understanding. It was that we could barely remember what the arguments might have been about, or who was involved.)
On the other end of the spectrum, I know a woman who is now approaching her 80th birthday. For the past couple years, she has maintained that June 1st is the time to start getting ready for fall. The summer, she says, is nearly behind us by then.
There is one more thing I would urge you to consider, however, when looking at time from a relative point of view. When you contemplate the days and years ahead, you are using today – and your age today – as a point of reference. However, future months are not going to seem as long as they do today. And this is assuming you are going to have that future time – something none of us is guaranteed!
Now, because our perception of time is relative, there are ways to slow down this effect. I and many others have been able to do this with great success. I’ll have more on that in the days to come.
In the meantime, seize the day.
It’s not as big a handful as it once was. Looking back, it will seem only smaller than it is.
Seize the day!
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