2025: Officially Closer to 2050 than 2000

Recently I heard a phrase that actually is a little scary for Gen X folks like me. We are now officially closer to 2050, than we are to 2000. If you think about that, and pair it with a 1990's high school graduation like me, then you start feeling a little old to say the least.

Some things are to be expected as we age. We gain weight which is more and more difficult to get rid of. That person in the mirror ever so slowly starts to reflect an image that doesn't reflect our younger self image. I think most of us actually don't feel as old as we are, though the cracks, aches and pains often remind us of our true age.

What no one prepares you for is the acceleration of time. I guess if we were to describe this phenomenon in a more scientific way, it would go something like this:

Age is Directly Proportional to the Perceived Rate of Acceleration of Time

Basically, as we get older, time seems to speed up. Why is that you might ask? I actually have given this a lot of thought over the years. I believe that it is all relative. 

My theory on this is of course not the same as Einstein's Theory of Relativity. I believe that this perceived speeding up of time as we age, is based on a basic principle. The perceived rate of acceleration of time is relative to your age. Every unit of time, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years, becomes a smaller and smaller unit of total time as compared to the number of years you've been alive as we get older. For example, at the age of 5 years, 1 year is a large unit of time when compared to the 5 years you've been alive. For that reason, we perceive time as passing by much slower. Conversely, when we are 40 and 50 years old and older, 1 year is a much smaller fraction of the time we've been alive. This is why as we age we perceive time as speeding up. I once heard a practicing Christian state that as we approach the "End of Days", time will speed up. Sorry to disappoint, but I don't think this concept has anything to do with religion.

So as we barrel towards 2050 and beyond, one things for certain. We will continue to experience time as speeding up until the day we pass. I guess that's the greatest life lesson we should take away when we're told to live each day as if it's your last, or don't put off the things you want to do in life. We are all running out of time, and the older you get, not only do you have less time to do what you want to do in life, you actually perceive each year forward as a little less than the year before, with every passing year. That was deep for this early in the morning 😮