subjective time

It is well known that the older you grow, the faster the years appear to be passing you. This was the subject of one of my stories, as a matter of fact. But I recently realized that what might make two years ago seem more recent than two years ago may have seemed at some point in the past may not just be the result of two years being shorter in relation to your age than it was back then. To be sure, your age certainly does have a bearing on how long a year seems to be (again a subject of the abovementioned story).

I even invented a fictitious formula a year ago to calculate how long a year appears to you (i.e. subjective time) against how long it appeared to you at the age of seven, at which age I decided a year would seem exactly a year: t* = log(7)/log(α=your age in absolute years). (Obviously there are still some things I need to iron out.) By this formula, for instance, the subjective age of a twenty-one-year-old is ω = 17.66 years, and the subjective age of a fifty-year-old is ω = 33.68 years. I worked around t* being greater than α for α < 7 years by assuming that t* for α < 7 is just your age, since a person of age < 7 years is defined to have no coherent conception of how long a year is. Finally, the subjective age of a 100-year-old is ω = 56.37 years. Quite tragic, really. Read the story. It's even more tragic there.

Anyway, the above was NOT what I realized last night after I had shut down my computer for the night. It was that time periods across distinct epochs in your life appear longer than the same length of time within an epoch. E.g. if you changed jobs, schools, or cities within the last two years, then something that happened two years ago would appear to be in the more distant past than if you hadn't changed jobs, schools, or cities. E.g. in 2009 I left Kalpa and joined FIITJEE. In 2011 I started college. 2013 today seems like last week, whereas 2009 in 2011 seemed more like last year. Another example: It has been a little more than a year since I was last in India, but it seems like forever, since my family has moved back, and I no longer go home to India. These differences in perception are too great to have been caused by a small difference in age, and is something that I shall actively try to factor into my expression for subjective time.