FLAGSTAFF, Arizona, February 23, 2002 -- Every year that goes by seems to take less time than the previous one. Where we used to have tons of time and not much to do, now it's the other way around.
This is no great revelation, to anyone with a few decades on the clock, but I've found the trend to be more and more apparent lately. The other day, I saw a promo on TV, announcing some pay-per-view coverage of a soccer game connected with this year's upcoming World Cup tournament.
As we get older, time goes by faster and faster, and we're all done before we know it.
Wait a minute, I thought. Didn't we just have a World Cup? Didn't I even write a column about it? Well, yes and yes (if you're interested, the column is here). But despite how recent the last Cup seems, it was four years ago.
What's happening is that as we get older, time goes by faster and faster. Many writers have commented on this phenomenon over the years, but the one who does it best -- at least in terms of quantifying what happens and why -- is James Kenney, in a piece called Logtime: The Subjective Scale of Life -- the Logarithmic Time Perception Hypothesis. He says that what we're dealing with is a real scientific phenomenon. It's not just that we've got more to do than we used to, but that our perception of time is actually accelerating, for measurable mathematical reasons.
Logging some miles on life's odometer
Kenney argues that time perception varies on a logarithmic scale. The endless (at times interminable) months and years of childhood give way to the shorter years of young adulthood, the hurried years of middle age, and finally, the end of "life's taper" (Oliver Goldsmith), which races by so fast that we're all done before we know it.
Kenney's article goes into exhaustive detail to explain how logtime works, so I won't duplicate his analysis here. But I can testify to the truth of what he's saying. A little over five years ago, when I hit the third-of-a-century mark (i.e., age 33 years, 4 months), I promised myself a new motorcycle for my 40th birthday. That seemed a long way off, at the time -- but all of a sudden, it's only about a year away! That means it's getting close to decision time, as far as which bike to buy. I've narrowed it down to four very different machines -- oddly enough, with one, two, three, and four cylinders.
Time to Max out?
The leading contender is Yamaha's mighty V-Max, a 1200cc, 145-horsepower, four-cylinder behemoth that, at the time of its introduction in 1985, was the fastest production bike on Earth. Although other bikes have since usurped that title, the Max has power characteristics that make it a machine everyone should ride at least once. I've been intrigued with this bike ever since I took my first Motorcycle Safety Foundation class ten years ago; the instructor owned one and commented, "I don't take long rides -- I take fast rides." However, rumors are circulating that 2002 may be the last year of production for this classic, because it's not a big seller and has long since been surpassed by other models (including several in Yamaha's own product line), in terms of raw performance numbers. If Yamaha doesn't produce a 2003 V-Max, I might have to scour bike dealers for an unsold 2002 model, or else just buy the cleanest used one I can find.
Failing in that, the next candidate is the Triumph Speed Triple -- a straight-up 3-cylinder machine that combines a ferocious engine with a comfortable riding position. Or I might opt for smoothness and elegance with BMW's R1150R, a flat-twin roadster that's a worthy successor to my 1972 R75/5 -- it's essentially the same bike, but with 30 years of additional development behind it. Finally, the dark horse is Kawasaki's KLR650, a single-cylinder dual-purpose (on/off-road) bike favored by long-distance adventurers. The KLR would be ideal for negotiating the hundreds of miles of unpaved Forest Service roads in northern Arizona. It also has a 6-gallon gas tank, which means I could ride from Flagstaff to Las Vegas or Tucson without stopping to refuel. (It also means I could spare some gas if Meg's bike, which only holds about 2 gallons, runs dry when we're out in the middle of nowhere.)
So we're stuck with it. The most important thing is to be aware of the phenomenon -- of the fact that it's real, not imagined, and that we're all in the same boat.
So you see the dilemma: I've only got a year or so to decide which of these four bikes is the ideal way to take the sting out of turning 40. But back to the main point. What's happening is that each year goes by more quickly than the last. Kenney puts it this way:
Logtime [logarithmic time] is the cognitive hypothesis that our age is our basis for estimating time intervals, resulting in a perceived shrinking of our years as we grow older. A simple mathematical analysis shows that our time perception should be logarithmic, giving us a subjective scale of life very different from that of the calendar. Our perception of aging seems to follow the same (Weber-Fechner) law as our perception of physical stimuli.
What does this mean? It means that when we're young, time seems endless -- it takes forever to get through a year of elementary school, which is followed by an endless summer, during which there's so much time and so little to do that we get bored to tears.
I don't know about you, but at 38, I can't remember the last time I was bored -- even when I didn't have much to do. It always seems as there's too little time to get anything done, and as soon as something gets started, it's over. It seems as though I just started my new job (at Northern Arizona University), when in reality, I've been there three months. Meg and I still feel like newcomers, here in Flagstaff, but we've been here almost 2-1/2 years. And the World Cup soccer matches, which seemingly just ended, are about to begin again.
When I first became aware of Kenney's logtime theory (this was several months ago, when I got an e-mail from him, which you can see on the letters page), I assumed that the time compression associated with age would only apply to long-ish periods of time -- months or years. But I'm starting to think it applies to days and weeks as well, and maybe even to hours and minutes. A weekend certainly seems to last a lot less time than it used to, as does an afternoon. If I don't get right up and organized on a Saturday morning, the day is shot and I haven't accomplished anything.
When I was younger and used to take a lot of road trips with my family, it seemed to take forever to get anywhere. Living in the Boston area, we made frequent visits to the summer home of a friend of ours -- a big log-cabin-styled "camp" in northern New Hampshire. The distance was something like 200 miles and took four or five hours, depending on how many stops we made.
To a small child, this was interminable -- it seemed as though we'd never get there. Yet when I made the same trip at age 31, I was there before I knew it. This difference in time perception is why kids are always annoying their parents by asking, "Are we there yet?"
Damn the torpedoes -- full speed ahead!
The logtime hypothesis suggests that it only gets worse as we get older. This sounds pretty depressing, but Kenney says, "The way to cope with the shrinking years seems to be an acceptance of human mortality. Scale your expectations, but don't worry too much about the limits. As you accelerate, ignore the brick wall ahead; you'll never feel it!"
So I guess we're stuck with it. We're going to keep "accelerating" through time, and there's nothing we can do about it, except to seize the day and do some of the things we've always wanted to do. Take a trip. Write the Great American Novel. Buy a V-Max (that's a sure way to accelerate!). Start saving money for retirement. Or whatever it might be. The most important thing is just to be aware of the phenomenon -- of the fact that it's real, not imagined, and that we're all in the same boat.
I'd be interested to hear some different viewpoints on logtime. If you've been feeling the same time acceleration I have -- or if you haven't -- let me know!
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