Living Time Machine

 few weeks ago I had some thoughts about difference in thinking of my kids and myself. There is tremendous difference between their thinking and mine. Probably this difference is comparable to the age gap between us. 

I like science fiction literature myself, and specially like stories about time travel – when personage of the book is traveling in time mostly not for producing certain actions in past to have at impact in future but mostly about time research, time care, time line options. The person traveling in time can see different historical times, separated by hundreds of years, in just a few seconds. In other cases of time travel the person can live for a long period of time and then return to  the point where he used to be right before his time journey started. Isn’t amazing? one person feels time line as a short moment of his time, and the other feels it like a long way that is hardly bearable to walk through. 

Think about your first memories from your life, how far can you remember your life? Another question: how well do you remember your last birthday, your previous birthday, or some significant events in your personal life or life of your close ones? What do you think about your next birthday, is it far away or is it close by? Are you starting to think about your next summer vacation? Would you be able to say this will be soon, or you are thinking about it like some far far away event, that you don’t even want to think about?

Well, you may ask where am I leading to? I believe that our feeling of time is very much dependent on our age – as older we get as quicker time passes by for us. There is nothing wrong with time itself as a physical value, but psychological feeling of time is different for each and every one of us. My son is going to be five years old in one month, but starting from the last month, he keeps asking me when is his birthday be? He keeps asking about his birthday ever since, every day, sometimes more then twice a day. I keep answering, we even draw a little chart with the dates on it that he can cross over every morning and see how many days left. The very next day after establishing this chart he came to me asking if he can cross over two or three days at once. The time is soooooooo slooooowww for my little one. On the other hand, my birthday is also coming in one month (yes, imagine – I cannot have personal party) and I already think of myself a year older, for me one month is like tomorrow, or even yesterday. Whenever someone asks my age I start to think what would I say, is it still 39 or already 40? I remember my previous birthday in details, as it was yesterday (really!) I remember how I was holding on hands my first son almost five years ago. Well, you can see, if you ask age of my son, he will definitely answer 4, but I said in previous sentence “almost five”.

The difference in acceptance of time line between ages is real time machine. I lived one day, when my son lived whole epoch. There is no science fiction, no tricks, no physics, just a little boy waits for ages to become five years old.