Why Time Feels Faster as You Get Older

Notes from the In-Between: A series about the season where life changes and you don’t yet know what comes next.

Reading this because your life feels different but you can't explain why?
Start here → FREE 10-PAGE MINI JOURNAL
__________

I realized something the other day that stopped me for a second.

I haven't ridden a bike in forty years.

Forty.

And my first thought was, how is that even possible? Because in my head, I'm still somewhere in my twenties. That's where I place myself without thinking about it. It isn't something I try to hold onto. It's just where my mind lands.

I mentioned it to my mom, who is turning ninety in a few weeks, and she said the same thing. She doesn't feel ninety. She feels like…herself. The same person she has always been, just living inside a body that has moved through time.

That's the part that stuck with me.

There is a version of you that doesn't keep time the same way your life does.

It doesn't track years or measure decades. It doesn't update itself to match what has happened around you.

It just continues.

You can feel it when something simple catches you off guard.

A number. A date. A memory that should feel far away but doesn't.

Forty years. Almost disbelief.

That should feel like distance. Sometimes it does, when you look at your life from the outside. When you see it reflected in your kids, your parents, the accumulation of everything that has happened.

But from the inside, it doesn't feel like distance. It feels compressed.

Like the years didn't pass in a straight line. Like they folded in on themselves somewhere along the way. Certain parts feel close enough to touch. Others feel like they belong to someone else entirely.

And the part of you that notices that feels the same. That's what's strange about it. You expect to feel like a different person by now. You expect some internal marker that says you've crossed into a new version of yourself.

But most of the time, you don't. You feel like yourself. The same internal voice. The same way of seeing things. The same sense of who you are when everything else is stripped away.

What changes is everything around it. The context. The responsibilities. The weight of what you've lived. The amount of life now behind you.

And every once in a while, those two timelines collide.

The one your body has been living. And the one your mind has been carrying. 

It's not something you can easily explain. It's just a moment where you stop and think, how did we get here so fast?

When you're young, time is easier to see. It shows up in the obvious places. School ends. You move. Relationships begin and end. Things change in ways you can clearly point to.

At some point, that changes. The outside of your life doesn't shift in the same clear ways, but time doesn't slow down with it. If anything, it moves faster. You just don't always have something visible to attach it to. So it feels like it disappears.

And then something small catches you. Forty years. Really? And for a second it doesn't make sense. Because it doesn't match how it feels from the inside.

The outside world doesn't see any of that. It just sees where you are on the timeline. The way other people see you has changed. You can feel that. There's an assumption about who you are now. Where you are. What this stage of life is supposed to look like. And at the same time you're still in the process of it. Still figuring it out as you go. Those two things don't always line up.

The gap between how the world sees you and how you actually feel isn't something that needs to be closed.

It's just where you are.

_________

Related reading from Notes from the In-Between

As It Is.

Why You're Still Waiting To Show Up For Yourself

_________

This is what the Between Here + Then journal was made for.

Space to sit with what's changing. Prompts that don't push you toward answers. Permission to be in it without having to fix it. SHOP THE JOURNAL

Not ready yet? Download the FREE 10-PAGE MINI JOURNAL