An arctic blast has covered most of the U.S. Every state is cold. Being the Grandma in South Florida, just under sixty degrees means boots and coats, even gloves, are brought out. It is also an opportunity for this Grandma to gloat to grandchildren as to the difference in temperature and have them laugh about how cold we are in Florida. There is always the hope that college in Florida might then become of interest to grandchildren who are being raised up north.
Having this discussion and goal for the grandchildren makes this Grandma feel old. The grandchildren are already old enough to discuss concepts and comparisons. The grandchildren, who were babies yesterday, are now growing fast. I remember how fast the children grew and were gone. It seems that time is speeding up even faster with the grandchildren.
Now, though, another dimension is added. I never thought about how old I was as the children were growing. With grandchildren, I think about my age often. I think about how old I was when they were born and how old I am now. I contemplate how old I am going to be when they go to college. I wonder if I am going to be alive or in good health when life passage events in their lives will occur. Time, life, good health come together as issues of significance.
I read that studies show time does speed up for us as we age.
In Fast Time and the Aging Mind, The New York Times, July 20, 2013, the author, Richard A. Friedman, reports:
On the whole, most of us perceive short intervals of time similarly, regardless of age. Why, then, do older people look back at long stretches of their lives and feel it’s a race to the finish?
Here’s a possible answer: think about what it’s like when you learn something for the first
time — for example how, when you are young, you learn to ride a bike or navigate your way home from school. It takes time to learn new tasks and to encode them in your memory. And when you are learning about the world for the first time, you are forming a fairly steady stream of new memories of events, places and people.
When, as an adult, you look back at your childhood experiences, they appear to unfold in
slow motion probably because the sheer number of them gives you the impression that they must have taken forever to acquire. So when you recall the summer vacation when you first learned to swim or row a boat, it feels endless.
But this is merely an illusion, the way adults understand the past when they look through the
telescope of lost time. This, though, is not an illusion: almost all of us faced far steeper learning curves when we were young. Most adults do not explore and learn about the world the way they did when they were young; adult life lacks the constant discovery and endless novelty of childhood.
Then Mr. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psycho-pharmacology clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical College, gives us his theory of a means to slow time and increase our cognitive functioning:
Studies have shown that the greater the cognitive demands of a task, the longer its duration is perceived to be. Dr. David Eagleman at Baylor College of Medicine found that repeated stimuli appear briefer in duration than novel stimuli of equal duration. Is it possible that learning new things might slow down our internal sense of time?
The question and the possibility it presents put me in mind of my father, who died a few years ago at age 86. An engineer by training, he read constantly after he retired. His range was enormous; he read about everything from astronomy to natural history, travel and gardening. I remember once discovering dozens of magazines and journals in the house and was convinced that my parents had become the victims of a mail-order scam.
Thinking I’d help with the clutter, I began to bundle up the magazines for recycling when my father angrily confronted me, demanding to know what the hell I was doing. “I read all of these,” he said.
And then it dawned on me. I cannot recall his ever having remarked on how fast or slow his life seemed to be going. He was constantly learning, always alive to new ideas and experience. Maybe that’s why he never seemed to notice that time was passing.
So what, you might say, if we have an illusion about time speeding up? But it matters, I think, because the distortion signals that we might squeeze more out of life.
It’s simple: if you want time to slow down, become a student again. Learn something that requires sustained effort; do something novel. Put down the thriller when you’re sitting on the beach and break out a book on evolutionary theory or Spanish for beginners or a how-to book on something you’ve always wanted to do. Take a new route to work; vacation at an unknown spot. And take your sweet time about it.
Wow! Becoming a student again. Those grandmas who live close to their grandchildren only have to do the new fangled homework with grandchildren to learn a lot of new things. My grandchildren teach me every time I see them – new things about my iPad and iPhone especially.
We grandmas in Florida are lucky. A local university, Florida Atlantic University, has adult continuing classes on a vast variety of topics, called Lifelong Learning at Florida Atlantic University.
It is described as:
The Lifelong Learning Society at Florida Atlantic University is dedicated to offering intellectually enriching educational experiences to adults of all ages. We offer non-credit courses in a welcoming atmosphere with state-of-the-art facilities. This community of learners with no age threshold enjoys a diverse and creative curriculum, along with concerts and entertainment. In establishing this program, FAU recognized the still unfulfilled demand for educational and intellectual stimulation for adults who are beyond the traditional university years.
The LLS program was established in 1980 on the Boca Raton campus and on the Jupiter campus in 1997. Courses available from October through June are taught by FAU professors and distinguished guest lecturers. Course offerings include such varied subjects as foreign policy, music, art, history, science, literature, philosophy, current events and films.
Long (we never say old) friends who are already retired praise the courses and how they have enriched their lives. There must be such courses available at a university near you. or available on line.
Retirement is coming closer for this Grandma and now I know what one of my retirement goals should be. Thinking about college for the grandchildren has led to thinking about continuing education for grandma, becoming a student again and into my life bringing new and different
Joy,
Mema
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