There’s a curious feeling many of us share as the seasons change, especially when summer fades into fall and winter approaches. It’s almost like time speeds up, days slip away faster, and suddenly we realize another year is closer to its end. This sensation isn’t just in our heads—it’s tied to how our brains perceive time as we age.
When we were kids, a whole year felt like an eternity. Summers seemed endless, school years stretched on forever. But now? The months fly by in what feels like the blink of an eye. Scientists say this happens because our perception of time changes with age and experience.
Young children tend to see time differently than adults do. For example, when shown two videos lasting the same amount of time—one full of action and events, the other calm and uneventful—young kids think the busy one lasts longer because their brains focus on all those moments happening one after another. Adults often feel the opposite; they find uneventful stretches drag on more because their minds aren’t caught up in constant new stimuli.
This shift happens partly because adults process life more linearly—they see time as a straight path moving forward—while children might think about it more in terms of volume or magnitude, almost like measuring how much “stuff” fills that period rather than how long it lasts.
As seasons pass each year faster for us grown-ups, it can feel like something is stealing pieces from our lives without us noticing—a season that quietly chips away at our sense of presence and slows down how deeply we experience each moment.
The pandemic years showed this even more clearly: some people felt trapped in slow-moving days while others experienced weeks racing past them unpredictably. Stress and routine disruptions can warp our internal clocks so much that entire periods seem lost or compressed when we look back.
So why does this matter? Because understanding this trickery by our own minds helps explain why life sometimes feels shorter than it really is—and maybe encourages us to slow down intentionally during these fleeting seasons before they slip through our fingers completely.
Time itself doesn’t speed up or slow down; seconds tick steadily no matter what—but how deeply you live those seconds makes all the difference between a life well-lived or one where years vanish unnoticed right under your nose.
