How Your Memories Are Lying About Your Age

Have you ever noticed how your memories seem to play tricks on your sense of age? It’s not just nostalgia coloring the past; your brain actually reshapes how you remember time and events, making you feel younger or older than you really are.

One big reason is how our brains handle memories in chunks, like scenes in a movie. When we move from one place to another—say, walking through a doorway—our brain treats that as an “event boundary.” It’s like hitting pause on one scene and starting another. This means some details from the previous moment get left behind or forgotten. So, when you look back at your life, it doesn’t feel like one continuous story but rather a series of snapshots stitched together by feelings and places.

This patchwork nature of memory affects how old we feel inside. For example, if many years have passed filled with routine days that blend into each other without strong new experiences, those years can seem to fly by when looking back. That’s because fewer vivid memories were formed during that time. On the other hand, childhood feels endless because everything was new and packed with fresh moments that our brains eagerly recorded.

As adults age, their perception of time speeds up partly because they encounter fewer novel experiences compared to children who are constantly learning and exploring. The more familiar life becomes—the same routines repeated—the faster time seems to slip away in hindsight.

So when your mind tells you “I’m still young” or “That was ages ago,” it’s really reflecting this complex way memory works: compressing some parts of life while stretching others out based on emotional impact and context changes.

In essence, your memories aren’t lying exactly—they’re just telling their story in a way shaped by how the brain organizes experience over time. This makes age less about counting birthdays and more about how richly those years were lived—and remembered.