“Time passes slowly up here in the mountains / We sit beside bridges and walk beside fountains / Catch the wild fishes that float through the stream / Time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream” —Bob Dylan, “Time Passes Slowly”
No, Bob. It doesn't.
Time doesn't pass slowly or quickly, unless you happen to be near a black hole. (Even then, it's more time relative to other people's experience of time, not time itself.) Time just passes, same as always, one second at a time. But there are certain instances when, despite this knowledge, it just doesn't feel that way. Back in school, those last 20 minutes before the bell rung just seemed ... to ... take ... forever. Or when you're at an amazing party, and it's over before you know it.
Last week, I experienced a subtle time shift of my own. I was on a new hike, of the straight point-A-to-point-B-and-back-again variety. And the time spent hiking from the start (a dirt parking lot) to the finish (a waterfall overlooking the Pacific) seemed to take a hell of a long time. But heading back over the same stretch seemed to take no time at all. Now, I didn't actually look at my watch during the hike, but the return was over the same distance with no huge changes in elevation. The two parts took roughly the same amount of time, but they felt eons apart.
But on the return trip, those bends in the road are old news; after a few weeks, you not only know Frank from HR's name, but also that he sneaks Baileys into his morning coffee.
What is my silly brain doing when this happens?
“One hypothesis is related to the attentional model of time perception,” says Eve Isham, a professor at the University of California-Davis Center for the Mind and Brain. “According to this theory, when more attentional resources are allocated to a particular event, that event appears longer lasting.”
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