I rarely find myself on "autopilot". Is that why?

> We also think that novelty rivets our attention and makes time seem to slow down. Childhood is full of novel experiences that, as they repeat, become less so. True novelty becomes unusual when you’re pushing 60 as I am now. The brain says, “Oh, that again,” and glosses past it.

Could anyone who is extremely fortunate and never had to work for money share their experience on this?

I find that the years that I spent on art (playing around, learning new things, not taking other peoples' orders) lasted longer than the ones I spent doing software development for money. Both were fun, but the remaining memories differ by intensity.

I personally don't find the logarithmic experience theory convincing. Why are the first three or so years excluded from this? It seems more likely that new experiences make more impact, or that repeated memories make them more intense. Or dozens of other theories.

Time is relative no matter what age you are and probably depends how much has changed in your life (maybe I should put a graph here to make it more scientific :)) )

This is just not my experience at all. I had a great childhood, but ask me about the most vibrant moments, and very few of them came before I was 18. The births of my children, my wedding, meeting my wife, lazy afternoons in college...

But is that experiencing life, though? How many strong memories from that "logarithmic first half" of my life do I have? Actually very few compared to what came later, and they are not particularly compelling either.

My guess is that the author just hit mid-life crisis after having spent one or two decades in an office. Boring mindless job is what makes life experience to plateau, not adulthood. If I think of the most accomplished persons that I know, who've done many things with their life, I can't imagine them saying that their childhood was half of their life. They would probably laugh at the idea.

Or maybe he hasn't reached that crisis yet, since he finds solace in the idea that his child is doing the living for him. Wait until the kids leave home, for the log to turn into a exponential panic.

Does this article seem accurate to your perception of life? It would explain some things regarding my interactions with most people if I am so completely missing something so fundemental about their existence.

Edit: Why does conveying my experience and desiring to understand the experience of others get a downvote? Genuinely curious.

You fulfilled Mother Nature's goal: reproduction. Everything else is an illusion. That's why Schopenhauer questioned parenthood.

The 'vicarious firsts' framing doesn't quite land for me because of that, but the 'urgency that won't let you drift' observation resonates. Maybe what matters isn't renewed wonder but having something -- family, friends, caring about the world -- that demands presence. The forcing function matters more than the feelings themselves.

My dad always says something related in nature: caring about and loving your family makes you a better person more than it helps your family.

I, personally feel like having lived is a net win, joy-wise, mostly on the strength of my childhood. So I'm trying to give that to my sons as well.

It sounds like the author has had a good childhood and is a good parent to their kids. Wonderful.

But the whole article is appropriately summarized by their final sentences

> You recreate your memories in them. They recreate childishness in you. Life folds back on itself, but not quite the same. It loops, but continues. A helix. > > Life, then, is the creation of childhoods. You have yours, and then you get to create childhoods for others. The time is yours, and theirs

They have completely given up on their own life, and the possibility that they, too, could live in a child-like way, where they have their own wonder, joy etc.

Eg

> Children make you childlike. Skipping through the park as an adult man raises eyebrows (deservedly or not.) Skipping through the park as an adult man with your son or daughter skipping next to you on your arm is one of life’s greatest joys, both for you and for anyone who sees you.

Why do you care about people's eyebrows? Go skip, play, dance, be curious, be creative - whether just for the sake of it, or also in your "work".

Your kids need to see you actually living so that they, too, might be able to actually live once they've moved into adulthood.

> Your Christmas trees get smaller, your lights less ambitious. Some find all of these fun for their own sake, but if you are not the type of person who finds ritual appealing you will likely find yourself slowly disconnecting from holidays. You will find yourself asking what all the hustle bustle is for. > > Kids. That’s who it’s for. Of all the experiences that children renew, traditions are renewed the most. When you put up a Christmas tree, it’s for kids. When you decorate for Halloween, it’s for kids. All of these holidays are in essence a celebration of childhood, and children let you see them all for the first time again. If you remember the excitement of galumphing

Christmas, and other traditions, are NOT about trees and lights and presents. Thanksgiving is not about waiting to stampede a Walmart to buy crap. It's about genuine communion with family, friends, or - if you're particularly clued in - even strangers who don't have such traditions available to them.

And so on.

They talk about the joy of showing kids Saturn in a telescope. I won't argue with that. But that doesn't mean an adult can't have joy in discovering new things in the cosmos - be it through a career or hobby in telescopes, or exploring all parts of nature, from microbes to volcanoes. Whether as a hobby or a career.

This person is missing the point of everything.

We must do as nietzsche described and progress from a camel, to a lion, to a child again. Joseph Campbell - a wonderful interpreter and guide of all of these things - explains it all well, a quote of which is at this page https://centeroflighttulsa.org/three-transformations-spirit/

Half of your life is childhood because you weighed subjective experiences differently when you had no knowledge or life experiences so you should change your life based on that situation where you were in Plato’s cave?

Actually fuck even this title is bad. If life is subjective, don’t ask how “we” should live. Subjectiveness means that’s a “you” question.

> But what about those of us who are well into the flattening part of the curve, what can we do for ourselves? You can seek new experiences perhaps. If time goes faster because your life has fewer firsts and more routine, then it can be extended by adding firsts. You can learn new things, travel, take up hobbies, or new careers.

> This works, to a point, but there are only so many firsts for you, and chasing this exclusively seems to lead to resentment. You remember the things you had as a kid. You remember the excitement and warmth of that world, how immediate and raw everything felt, and you want to go back. You start to regret that the world has changed, even though what changed the most is you.

I like to think that life slows down once you form a stable image and story of yourself. The more you convince yourself that that image is fixed, the faster time will go by. That might justify why childhood seems longer, since that image seems to form around adolescence.

Experiencing new "firsts" but keeping that image of yourselfe fixed just works for a while. That is why it may lead to resentment, as the article says.

So dont fool yourself: some image of who you are gives you some stability, but just use it for that, so that you dont run crazy with options.

If you treat every event as something that might reshape your ego, then suddenly a big number of experiences are new, and time suddenly slows dont. It may even appear to dissapear from time to time.

I think this explanation is true but incomplete. I believe it's also related to Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency [0], the way I see it, if an organism is smaller it has a higher frequency, it sees more image per second, therefore perception of time is slower. (E.g. a fly sees you moving really slowly). Maybe it's related to the processing time of images, with smaller brains insect can process more of them per second.

Maybe humans process more images as children, therefore see the time time going slower.

It's been a while I didn't think about this, maybe some studies have been made in the past years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold

William R. Emerson, Ph.D. https://emersonbirthrx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Journa...