There’s a curious phenomenon no one quite prepares you for. It unfolds not with a bang, but with a soft, almost imperceptible click, usually sometime after the orbit around the sun we call our mid-twenties. The gears of life, which once turned with a deliberate, measurable cadence, begin to whir. And then, without warning, they engage into something else entirely. Life begins to speed up.
Remember the expansive sprawl of childhood summers? They were vast epochs, territories of time so wide you could get lost in them. The school year itself felt like a geological age. Each birthday was a monumental event, a summit you climbed toward for what felt like forever. Time was measured in tangible milestones—learning to ride a bike, waiting for a driver’s license, counting the days until graduation. The future was a distant, shimmering concept, a landscape you gazed toward from a great and comfortable distance.
Then comes the bridge period, those early twenties. Time gains a little momentum. College years blur, or those first few jobs teach you the rhythm of weeks. But you’re still largely the author of your own hours. Weekends are long, adventures are spontaneous, and the path, while perhaps uncertain, feels like your own to tread at your own pace. You feel time moving, but it’s a river you’re swimming in, not a current sweeping you away.
The shift happens quietly. It’s not marked by a single event, but by a gathering consensus among the years. You suddenly notice that Christmas decorations are in stores again, and you could swear you just took the last ones down. You begin to say things like, “I can’t believe it’s already May,” with a genuine, bewildered shake of your head. The seasons, once distinct chapters, start to feel like pages flipping in a breeze.
What fuels this great acceleration? It is the compounding of responsibility, yes, but more so the consolidation of routine. The scaffolding of a full adult life is erected—the career that demands more, the relationships that deepen into partnership or family, the mortgage, the rhythms of maintaining a home. Your days become templates, efficient and full. And when every day is structured, when one week mirrors the last, they begin to stack upon each other seamlessly, creating a smooth, fast-sliding surface down which the years tumble.
Memory plays its trick, too. When you are five, a year is one-fifth of your entire existence—a colossal portion. At thirty-five, a year is a mere fraction, a thin slice of a growing whole. New experiences, which stretch and define time in youth, become less frequent. The brain doesn’t need to labor to encode the familiar drive to work, the well-known tasks, the predictable evenings. It’s the novel moments—the trips, the crises, the profound joys—that act as time-stamps. As these become rarer in the daily hum, the years contract in the rearview mirror.
There is a bittersweetness to this realization. A touch of melancholy for those long, languid afternoons that seem forever out of reach. But there is also a potent urgency hidden within the speed. The acceleration is a message, whispered more insistently with each passing year. It tells us that our currency is finite and spending fast. It asks us what we are doing with our precious, speeding days. It pushes us out of indecision and toward intention.
The goal, then, is not to slow the impossible clock, but to deepen the experience within its ticking. To consciously create novelty, to seek moments of true presence that will stand as markers in the blur. To look up from the routine and really see the face across the table, to feel the sun on your skin, to venture into the unfamiliar so your brain has something new to map. It is to understand that life isn’t slowing down. This is the ride. The scenery is rushing by. And the only worthy response is to lean in, pay attention, and make sure the blur is filled with color, meaning, and love. The years may be picking up speed, but we can learn, with grace and a little courage, to steer within the current.
