About the subjective perception of time You’ve probably noticed more than once that with age, time runs faster and faster. If in childhood every day was a whole life, and a year was equal to eternity, now we are increasingly surprised at how imperceptibly weeks, months, years, and life fly by. And it seems that we are getting less and less time in this whirlwind, and birthdays are becoming a sad holiday. Is it possible to somehow slow down this run, to regain a child’s perception of time? First, you need to understand what time is and how a person perceives it. The trick is that there is no substance, energy or field called “time” that can actually be captured and measured. Accordingly, there is no organ that senses time. There is no chronometer or clock generator in the brain, based on which a person could directly measure time. Therefore, to determine the time interval, the brain tracks the switching of attention in the flow of our activity. The more such conscious shifts of attention, the more eventful the time seems, and therefore the longer. To make it clearer, let's look at examples. Time drags on the longest during the painful wait. What happens in this case? We often look at the clock, look carefully, listen to see if the person we are waiting for has appeared (has the line moved forward), at the same time we manage to think about this situation, about other similar situations, look at the clock again, etc. That is, attention constantly switches with active consciousness. The opposite extreme example is sleep: there is no consciousness, the perception of the surrounding world is minimal. Therefore, the deeper the sleep, the faster it flies by: as soon as you lie down, you already have to get up! And if the sleep is restless, then it seems that there is no end to the night. In the waking state, time flies most quickly when we are carried away by a very interesting activity, or are deep in thought. In this case, we are usually in a light trance, when consciousness narrows as much as possible on a certain activity, and attention switches only within this activity, without noticing anything external. Now let's return to the perception of time for children and adults. Let's conduct the following thought experiment: imagine that a father has picked up his son from kindergarten, and they are walking along a familiar road home. Child: And Mishka brought Spider-Man today, he can climb wherever you want... - Wow, a butterfly! How beautiful!... – (Tries to walk along the curb, remembering the tightrope walker in the circus.) – Dad, look, the plane has taken off! Plane, plane, put me on a flight. When I grow up, I will become a pilot... - Dad, will you buy some ice cream? - and so on all the way. All this time, dad can remember some episode at work, or think about upcoming events. Accordingly, if the son’s familiar road home is full of new things, and his attention is constantly switching, then the father goes “on automatic” and his attention is absorbed in the internal monologue. The whole day goes on like this. Thus, the number of events that force a child to switch attention is usually much higher than that of an adult, and therefore the day seems long. At night, the brain processes the information received during the day, recording all important events (according to the new-significant principle) in long-term memory and eliminating automatic actions, banal events (wasting time and fruitless thoughts). Since here, too, a child has much more new impressions than an adult, his time in the long run is also longer. So is it possible to return a child’s perception of time? Yes, it's possible, but only partly. To the extent that you are able to fill your life with new impressions and significant events every day, to the extent that your activities will be dynamic, versatile and creative. That’s what I wish for you! Sergey Lysenko, consulting psychologist, group psychotherapist.8-923-473-87-76, [email protected]