A conjecture on the human perception of time
One assumes that a year should always last a year. It should take neither longer, nor shorter than a year, for a year to pass. This is a perfectly reasonable assumption, one would reasonably assume.
In experience however, the perceived length of a year appears to be inversely proportional to age:
The younger one is, the longer a year seems to stretch. Conversely, the year seems to whiz by, as one gets older — until it is almost a blur during most of our productive years.
So, does the perception of the length of a year get shorter and shorter as one ages further?
This does not appear to be likely.
Probably, sometime after middle age and post-retirement, the years will start to feel longer again. Until finally, as we age further, a year will eventually stretch to infinity, as we lose sense of time and drift off into the void.
The perceived length of a year will therefore most probably form a bathtub curve.
Is this hypothesis correct?
Perhaps only time will tell.
