When we were young parents, we were already noting that time was beginning to pass more quickly than it had when we were in college, high school, grade school, etc. Summers in particular blew by. At that time I cooked up the theory that the labor-intensiveness and sometimes (let's just say it) the tedium of tending to young children -- and in particular when they were balking at taking a nap or going to bed -- had evolved as an evolutionary offset to the larger-scale acceleration of the passage of time.
I might also have added the slowness of the work week, work day and indeed the meeting, all of which sometimes seem to drag on and on. This effect persists well into one's working life. Particularly in periods like right now, the period from Labor Day to Thanksgiving during which, for many people in the private sector, there is an unbroken string of that most unwelcome of phenomena, the 5-day work week.*To the extent that the work week and work day sometimes seem to reticent to end, they slow our perception of the passage of time and hide the fact that it's all just winging by. Also the countdown to retirement, a real thing for people with very boring jobs.
On the opposite side of the ledger we find cancer and other painful and vexing maladies which complicate our lives. These sometimes help us to embrace the fleetingness of time and life.
All of this is tremendously complicated by the uncertainty of death and what comes after. I'd like to see Pascal's Wager put up on Polymarket.
*Obviously, this offset is complicated for many by modern phenomena as "no school November," during which the state abdicates its responsibility to provide economies of scale in child care.
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