No, I Don’t Need More Time — Just a Better Perspective of It

The Older I Get the Faster Time Flys

Every so often, a WordPress prompt lands right in the middle of what I’ve been thinking about. Today’s question — “Do you need more time?” — made me stop and smile. No, I don’t need more time. I’ve already been given a lifetime’s worth. What I need, and what most of us need, is a better perspective of it.

Time is one of those things we assume we understand until we stop long enough to think about it. The older I get, the more I realize that time itself hasn’t changed — only my perception of it has. When I was young, summers seemed to last forever. Now, decades slip by in what feels like a season. The difference isn’t in the clock. It’s in the way my mind measures life.

When I was a kid, every experience was new — the first job, first car, first heartbreak, first trip away from home. Each one left a deep impression. My brain recorded those years in high-definition, every frame crisp and memorable. Now at 69, my days are more predictable. Routine is comfortable, but it has a way of blurring time. When days look alike, they merge into one another. Before I know it, another year has gone by and I’m wondering where it went.

I’ve learned that the human brain measures time through novelty and attention. When I’m fully engaged — traveling somewhere new, learning something challenging, or writing a story that excites me — time feels abundant. But when life slips into repetition, it compresses. It’s as if my brain takes fewer mental snapshots, so the movie of my life speeds up.

Science suggests that our perception of time changes because of the way our brains measure it against the span of our lives. When we’re young, a single year represents a large percentage of our total life — for a 10-year-old, it’s 10% of everything they’ve ever experienced. But as we grow older, each passing year becomes a smaller and smaller slice of the whole. By the time we reach 65, a year is barely more than 1% of our lived experience, and the future ahead feels shorter by comparison. This shrinking ratio makes time feel like it’s speeding up, even though the clock never actually changes — only our perspective does.

Even small, ordinary moments reveal this illusion. Waiting for a pot of water to boil can feel endless — but turn away, check a message, or flip through the news, and suddenly it’s boiling over. Focus stretches time. Distraction shrinks it.

The same is true on a larger scale. When I’m bored or restless, time drags. When I’m inspired, it disappears. That’s why children seem to live in slow motion — their worlds are new, filled with discovery. As adults, we live faster not because we’re busier, but because we’ve stopped noticing.

So, do I need more time? No. What I need is to be more awake within the time I already have. To notice it. To respect it. To make it matter.
I don’t want endless time — I want meaningful time. I want moments that leave an imprint, that feel alive and remembered.

Time doesn’t fly. We do.
And when we learn to see it differently — when we stop chasing it and start honoring it — every minute becomes enough.

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