Slow Down, You Age Too Fast

Slow Down, You Age Too Fast

I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?

Isaiah 43:19

What did you have for dinner last night? Where did you park your car last time you were at the grocery store? You probably can’t quite remember, and according to a study done in 2004, that’s because everyday routines are handled by our brains in autopilot, whereas new experiences require fuller attention. Because of this, routine experiences can be blamed for time seeming to pass more quickly as we age.

Dinah Avni-Babad, a psychologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explains that routine can be thought of as a straight line in one’s memory, with new experiences represented as a jagged line. “The days feel much, much longer when you’re a child,” she says, with many experiences making jagged lines. On the other hand, we encounter fewer new experiences as adults, cruising through on a straighter line. So Avni-Babad suggests that you get out of your ruts if you want life to pass by more slowly.

Of course, that’s not always as easy as it sounds. Some of us are stuck in a rut because we like it. We don’t have to think about much when we are in our routine. But that’s not always to our advantage.

Consider the current US standard railroad width: 4 feet, 8½ inches. How did we arrive at that very particular width? It’s the one that English railroad-building expatriates brought with them to America. How did the English decide on that width? The first British rail lines were built by the same standard as the prerailroad tramways, which in turn were patterned after standard wagon-wheel spacing before the tramways. And before that, wagon-wheel spacing had been standardized by Imperial Rome—England’s former ruler—whose war chariots used a standard spacing between their wheels.

Over time, the wheels would leave deep ruts along the extensive road network the Romans built. If the Romans didn’t use a standard wheel spacing—and if the British wagon-wheel spacing didn’t match Roman ruts—the wheels would break. The Roman standard was derived after trial-and-error efforts of early wagon and chariot builders. They determined the best width that would accommodate two horses was 4 feet, 8½ inches. Thus the United States standard railroad gauge is a hand-me-down standard based upon the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Sometimes it seems easier to go with a prior “routine” rather than change something we might like better a different way. How often that same principle is at work in marriages!

Now that you know you can slow time in your relationship by doing something new, give it a try. What can the two of you do this week that will get you out of your routine?

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes