Does time move fast or slow for you?
“Time is an illusion”
— Albert Einstein
This week, I spoke with a 40-year-old friend and mom of three kids. She was concerned that her kids’ lives were just passing her by and that time was just moving so fast. My parents used to say that, too. I shared with her that my experience was different. For me, I think time just moves more slowly.
Not quite the theory of relativity
I quoted Albert Einstein, who is famous for stating that time is relative based on the perspective of the observer. For example, time is slower in moving objects, and this has been verified using atomic clocks on airplanes. Also, time is slower in higher gravity. As such, time runs slower at sea level, closer to the earth, than it is on a mountain top. Conversely, we age a little faster even standing a few steps higher on a staircase, and this phenomenon has been measured with changes in altitude as small as 33cm (or about a foot!)
However, this post isn’t about physics. It’s about our own psychological perspectives of time. For full disclosure, I’ve written about “duration neglect” before in another blog about the psychology of fasting. In this case, fasting for 26 days doesn’t “feel” like so long when there is a VERY regular routine because the mind “de-duplicates” the same experiences.
This time I wanted to write about parenting, and why it doesn’t feel so fast to me! So far, I’ve come up with three observations, and I encourage all the rest of you to share yours in the comments!
Many mementos
“Objects from our past can make memories feel like they happened ages ago.”
When our older daughter was young, she used to write us a lot of letters and notes. A funny one started with “Daddy, I am sorry I always break the computer…” (I swear she should have worked in quality assurance for a software company!) The letter was displayed and archived a long time ago, and the Windows PC running kids’ games that always crashed ultimately was replaced with a series of Macbooks which never broke. Still, when she got older, she gave me a T-shirt reminiscent of that period in time that said “No! I will not fix your computer!” Over the years, this T-shirt has gotten a lot of wear, and it provides me with a funny reminder of that age in her life when she’d written those letters! This shirt has survived many Goodwill purges, and I took a picture of it (on top of my T-shirt stack!) this morning.
Our younger daughter always drew pictures or made little art projects. A funny one she drew when she was just under 3 years old was captioned “Mommy with doo-doo out my butt.” (Marsha would always ask her what the drawing depicted and would label the drawings before displaying and later archiving them.) Before our daughter left for Chicago where she is starting her first job after grad-school, she found this photo, and we archived it. Classic. (We also thought it was funny that she depicted Marsha as having blonde hair!)
Even when all of these little things around us somehow “bring back” those moments, recalling the memories makes them feel like lifetimes ago to me! Just yesterday, we had a couple over for brunch who have a little baby (so cute!), and describing old times felt more like describing a movie plot than our own lives!
Are there mementos that you have kept that return you to your past but make you feel distant from it?
History can repeat itself, but things change
“History repeats itself.”
— Karl Marx
"Change is the only constant in life."
— Heraclitus
Life is complex. There are patterns of human behaviors, but the specifics and contexts of these patterns always change. This interplay of patterns and change makes things interesting and keeps life from being repetitive.
One example of patterns is how our daughters’ early proclivities played out in their choice of study. At the same time, within these patterns, so much learning and evolution on their part puts those points even further back in time psychologically.
Our older daughter who wrote us letters at an early age still does A LOT of writing as a PhD student in sociology, demography, and policy. On the other hand, this same daughter who would “break” the computer now teaches graduate students on statistical computing and data visualization! We joke that our daughter with the strong verbal skills became "a tech bro" when she started programming in R.
Our younger daughter, who used to prefer pictures and art projects over writing, reinforced her artistic background by attending a college of fine arts, doing a master’s degree in material culture, and choosing to start a job soon at an architecture firm in Chicago. At the same time, this daughter that was all about communicating through pictures and not spoken words or writing would ultimately choose a path in social sciences! Material culture is in the field of anthropology, which is all about writing!
Have you experienced the interesting juxtaposition of both patterns seen early on and change in your lives or the lives of your children?
Chaos?
"When you're in the midst of chaos, time seems to slow down as your mind tries to process everything happening around you."
Beyond learning and evolution, I think modern society presents big life changes that separate experiences.
Lots of moves. In our lives as parents (from 1997 until now), we moved seven times, each separating different time periods in our minds with a different home environment.
Change in parenting and social circles. As parents, we shifted from a “music family” to a “sports family.” Both our daughters were active in band, guitar, and piano. However, this changed when our older daughter was forced by the high school water polo coach to choose between marching band (where she was “rookie of the year” as a freshman) and varsity water polo (where she ultimately became team captain). Our younger daughter never did high school band, dropping it after middle school knowing that she’d have to make a choice once playing varsity water polo, where she became an all-league and all-division water polo player, even winning her school’s Scholar-Athlete award back then. (She forgot she won the award! And now, she is trying to use that forgotten status now as a means to get special treatment.) So, our weekends went from going to recitals and concerts with one set of families to watching water polo matches with a different set of families.
Different studies. Our older daughter transitioned from an interest in studying solely Classics to a double major with political science and also a master’s in political science. Then she pursued further graduate studies in sociology and demography. Our younger daughter transitioned from an interest in studying Design to social sciences, as she got a master’s degree in anthropology. Each of these changes, along with their changes in schools, created a different set of intellectual pursuits. And, for me personally, it changed our conversations over time and forced me to look at the world a little differently!
With so many different unique experiences, casting ourselves back to each time as parents just makes each one of those individual times feel like a long time ago.
Even professionally, I feel I’ve had so many different jobs that can be separated by different distinct time periods. These different periods add yet another layer of complexity to my experience of time.
Can you think of other points of demarcation that help your brain categorize experiences separately?
Your Turn
Does time move fast for you? If it doesn’t, are there things that make time move slower for you?
Survey Results to Date
“The best online content gets a lot of value from reading user contributions too, not just the author's words.”
— A retiredpdx.com reader
Substack doesn’t let me know who left this suggestion in my survey, but it was really good! I tried to follow up on this suggestion for this post. (Keep reading for other results.)
To be clear, I would like more online dialog! I love reading the comments and feel that the discussion adds to the pieces. I tried this time to suggest topics for discussion! Does this work?
To all of the 11 people so far who have answered the survey in response to my “Six Months In” post, thank you. If you have not responded yet, I would certainly appreciate your input! It is not too late!
For those who are interested in what people have written so far as of this morning (March 16, 2025), I’ve pasted in the survey results so far to the bottom of this post. I really appreciate the time you’re taking to both read this and to respond.
For some quick responses.
I understand that people feel they are “getting behind” on my posts. To that, I would let people know that “it’s OK!” Whenever possible, I try to link back to posts where I’ve provided background information so you can “catch up” by following links.
To make it easier to find the posts most relevant to a specific interest, I have also categorized them along the top menu bar in the web interface (https://www.retiredpdx.com)
For example, if you’re interested in just finance, you can just choose the “Finance” topic from the top menu in the web interface.
Screenshot of retiredpdx.com by author I’m going to wait for more survey results to determine whether a podcast is in order. The 11th response begged me not to do it! In the meantime, the Substack app provides a way to listen to the posts with a computer voice.
When viewing the post from the Substack mobile app, you can tap the play icon to us text-to-speech. Screenshot by author. 
The Substack app makes audio controls available while using text-to-speech. Screenshot by author. I am thinking about this comment “Personally, for the frequency of posts, I'd like to see some variety in length - like mix in-depth stuff with some quick hits on provocative topics.” For my Wednesday post, I will try a different technique of “quick hits” on provocative topics that come up between now and then!
The raw suggestions
You are right; time is an illusion - but as the late great Douglas Adams said, "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." I have always thought there was more truth in that statement than appears in the first reading.
Time moves too fast for me, I retired early (I'm 61) and the days rush past so fast, hurtling me towards my end! Meditation could help slow this down...