I’ve always felt it was a matter of how much you were learning or experiencing new things. When you’re very young, literally every second is streaming information into your brain that you’ve never seen, touched, tasted, done…etc.

Once we get life’s patterns down, once we learn what motions we need to go through to ensure our own survival, we also find them banal and literally start blanking them out of our minds while we think of other things, dream of that next new experience that may now be months or even years coming.

What we all miss is that those very motions are our lives. Every one of those seconds we just grind through is time. You wake up at the next experience you’ve been waiting for, smile wide, and then realize you’re 5 years older.

If you want to slow down time, actively seek out new things to do, no matter how small. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? It isn’t.

Edit to say I’ve often thought about what it will be like when death is imminent. You know, people say you’ll never wish you worked harder on your deathbed? But I tell you what, I ‘may’ wish for some of those long weeks of ‘wishing my life would speed up just because I’m stuck at the office’ back.

Kinda makes every moment feel sweet for awhile, appreciating it, at least until you fall back into the old pattern.