I know I’m not alone when I say September seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Wasn’t it just a moment ago that the Columbia Valley community was buckling down for a summer of fun, sun and good times. Well, there may not have been as much sun as people would have liked, but when it did appear, it was blazing hot and beautiful.
Just like that, fall is upon us — a reminder, as From Scratch writer Lara McCormack points out in this week’s column on nutritious and delicious back-to-school lunches (see page 16), that as the kids return for their next year of school, the rest of us are getting older too, which wouldn’t be such a point of consternation if it didn’t seem like it was happening so darn fast.
A quick Google search brings up an article published on the Science Alert website at the end of 2015 (New Year’s being the other benchmark along with September’s back-to-school for observing how fast time seems to fly by) that offers an explanation for the speediness of our day-to-day.
A psychologist in Singapore has determined that interacting with technology increases a type of pacemaker within our physiology that measures the passage of time. By constantly using technology, our brains are getting more and more efficient at processing information and, as a result, are tricking us into thinking time is passing faster than it really is. As the author points out, the good news is that time isn’t actually speeding up, only our brains are.
So there’s the option of surrendering to the changing perception, or capturing back that time that’s been feeling like it’s flying through your fingers by disconnecting from your daily devices and taking time to smell the autumn leaves. Easier said than done, but nowhere better to try it than right here in the valley.
