Sunday, June 24, 2012

How to mathematically explain why things always speed up when they are about to end?

If I were to invent a formula (perhaps there already exists one that I am unfamiliar with) for that phenomenon of time speeding up unnecessarily and unfortunately...this would be it.

5 months = a long time right?
4 months go by
5 - 4 = 1

1 month left.

Where did the 4 months go? I have no idea, but here I am with a little under a month left of my study abroad experience and I don't understand why time seems to go by so much faster now. Of course it has its slow moments like when I am freezing and studying or when I am trying to get home via public transportation, but on average it has speeded up exponentially and unexplainably.
Al fondo, this is a very philosophical math formula, making it more theoretical and likely, impossible to prove in any way, but I have a feeling that the majority of people would agree with my proposed theory despite the lack of cited literature, research or fact.

It is purely based on human feeling in relation to time. Time is relative until we put meaning to it. These 4 months past have meant so much to me, but now I am forced to recognize a real and imminent end to the experience that I know as study abroad. It is confusing really. I havn't seen my family in forever so clearly I am excited to see them, but what about my chilean family? When will I ever get to see them again?

Clearly we have diverged from the mathematical into the pathetically sappy and preoccupied frame of mind. I shall leave you with this, the whole business of time speeding up? it's good. it means that the time spend was good, it meant something to you and now that time has relevance. Before it was just the passing of units that we call minutes, the sun rising and setting in the southern hemisphere and gravity pulling the waves of the pacific in and out. Now it is my past, memories and and whole year of experiences worth so much to me. And there is more to come, hence the unnecessary-ness of this sappy sappy post.

 thinking man (made of tape) aside the polluted Mapocho river

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