Art by Sofia Cifuentes
Transparency Item: The Perspectives section of the Graphic is comprised of articles based on opinion. This is the opinion and perspective of the writer.
I wake up one morning and suddenly this semester is nearly over. How did this happen? When did this happen? It was one of those moments that slapped me in the face and reminded me that time truly is an illusion.
When I was a kid, an hour used to seem like the longest thing in the world. An hour-long car ride, an hour-long class, or hour of homework felt like an eternity where I’d be impatiently waiting its ending.
Now, an hour feels like it goes by in seconds. Instead of dreading anything that was an hour long I find myself wishing an hour of time would never end.
Recently I feel like my days are constantly measured in one-hour increments. I give myself an hour to get ready for class, my classes are either an hour and a half or two, I study in increments of an hour, I always wish I had just one more hour of sleep. Those hours feel like seconds and suddenly my day is done, and I repeat it the next day.
On a normal day I spend 16 hours awake. That’s only 16 small pieces of time, and they tend to disappear faster than I can hold on to them.
Each hour morphs into a day, and each day blurs into the next. Before I know it I realize that three months have passed and I am wondering how that’s possible.
The biggest thing that changes as I grow up is my concept of time. The most alarming awareness of it comes from the realization that I’ll never get any of it back.
I couldn’t wait to grow up. Now I can’t help but wish it would all just slow down. I’ve always remembered adults warning me how fast it all goes but I used to think they were exaggerating until I felt it for myself. Since the moment I felt the weight of that warning, time only seems to go faster and faster.
That is what makes time so deceptive. I tend to forget just how intangible it is. I treat it like something I can measure, manage or save. The truth is, time isn’t something anyone can actually possess.
I have been starting to see time not as something that passes but instead something that I pass through. The sun is simply just rising and setting every day, and I just happen to be growing and evolving with each time it does that.
It’s unique how time tends to distort itself based on the occasion. It forces an illusion that makes some memories feel inescapable while others feel like I’m looking back at myself living in a different lifetime.
Time bends and changes depending on how I experience it. The moments I love and want to hold on to forever always seem to fly by. The moments I wish would end feel like they last an eternity.
I notice it tends to never work in my favor. It rushes when I want it to linger and lingers when I want it to pass. It never seems to move at the pace I want.
But maybe that’s the illusion of it all. Time isn’t the enemy, it’s a mirror reflecting how present we are. The more I try to chase each moment in time the faster it disappears and the more I try to resist each moment the longer I feel trapped in it.
These moments may feel like a unexplainable phenomenon, but there is scientific reasoning that proves why time moves differently depending on the moment.
There is a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei which serves as the body’s circadian clock, according to the National Institute of Health. This part of the brain is essentially the master clock of our bodies, regulating when we sleep, when we are awake and when we feel hungry.
Neurotransmitters in the brain tend to affect the perception of time that the brain produces. When living through a moment that excites neurons, it causes them to fire quicker than normal, causing a sensation that time is speeding up, according to American Psychology Association.
On the other side of this, there is also reasoning as to why time seems unbearably longer in moments that are difficult or hard. The amygdala is the part of the brain that creates memories. In hard moments, the brain is put into “fight-or flight,” which accelerates the rate that it processes information and creates memories. When more memories form, time seems to be protracted, according to Baylor College of Medicine.
When adults used to warn me that time goes by too fast, they really did mean it — and there is a reason why. As children, the brain undergoes a massive introduction to new memories and development, according to University College London. Things are more vivid and this world feels so new.
The older we grow, we progressively have fewer new experiences and our perception of the world becomes more automatic, desensitizing us to our surroundings, according to Psychology Today. Because of this, we are absorbing less information and inherently causing time to feel like it is passing far more quickly.
Lately I’ve realized how easy it is to get lost between wanting time to move faster and wishing it would stop all together. A paradox of constantly wishing for the weekend, but realizing with each week that passes I am close to the semester being over.
This constant push pull leaves me stuck in this loop of anticipation. I have a guilty tendency of going through each hour, each day and each week with tunnel vision — just trying to focus on what’s next instead of what’s here. That mindset forces me to lose sight of the presence that everyone always seems to preach about.
The truth is the only time that exists is now, not the next hour that I planned in my head, or the previous hour that I feel like I wasted. It is hard to remember to slow down in each moment, especially when the busyness of life occupies the majority of our days.
There really is no linear solution to the difficult battle of keeping up with time. Living each moment, and filling each hour increment of my day with purpose and presence has been my biggest coping mechanism.
Even if doing textbook readings or studying for an exam aren’t the the most enjoyable tasks to occupy time, embrace the fact that you are living through a moment you won’t ever get back.
If there’s anything I learned from these past three months, it is that time isn’t something that “happens” to us. It’s something that we shape through how deeply we allow ourselves to live inside of it.
College forces this lesson to hit even harder. Every deadline, every lecture that tests my attention span, every exam I wish to get over with becomes a reason to wish time away. But at the end of the day, appreciating each individual moment in between is the most important part of the journey.
There is something really bittersweet about realizing that in the midst of getting through each day, I am also living through some of the best times of my life. Time may be an illusion, but I know that my time has been spent pretty well.
___________________
Follow the Graphic on X: @PeppGraphic
Contact Eva Shauriki via email: eva.shauriki@pepperdine.edu
