The fear of the passage of time.

What does it mean to fear the passage of time? And what could it be due to?

Time is usually the cause of stress and anxiety because it is something that we do not handle, that runs outside our intervention. Time is as such a convention, a creation that humanity has carried out in order to have a certain record about it and stipulate certain stages and cycles that serve us to order our lives.

Beyond these attempts to grasp it, time always slips away. His pace is essentially subjective, and we have experienced this during the lockdown, for example. Routines and habits change and the record we have overtime changes.

The level of commitment or enjoyment with what is happening is also important as a determining factor regarding the perception of the speed or slowness with which it passes.

Fearing the passage of time is very frequent because it implies refusal, to a certain extent, to accept that we do not control it and that its passage represents changes and uncertainty. Both a clinging to the past, nostalgia for childhood or for times that have already passed, as well as acceleration and anxiety about the future, make it difficult to appreciate the present experience.

Living in connection with what is happening step by step allows us to assess what is presented, without the need to compare it with past moments or activate future expectations.

In general, the fear of the passage of time represents for many people a fear of the loss of youth, of beauty, of productive capacity. And essentially a fear of deterioration, and in the background, of death. Knowing that we are finite beings and aware of that finitude, generates certain anguish associated with the future and the effects that time can have on our mind and body.

The current societies of technology, speed, and consumption place us in a complex plane regarding these issues. If everything happens fast, and there is always something new, the adrenaline and the vertigo of speed accentuate this sensation that time is slipping away. The contemplation, the receptivity, and the cultivation of the symbolic and spiritual, which for so long was essential in the sustenance and evolution of humanity, today is empty, it does not occupy a primordial place in the sales agenda, and this produces a profound crisis of meaning that is undoubtedly related to the fear of the passing of time.

The fear of the passage of time is accentuated if we do not find meaning or purpose. If we spend a day to day empty of meaning, time will pass in this way, and probably we will have the feeling that time is "losing". The pressure for productivity does not help in this scenario either.

Finding a true passion and deploying it in everyday life is a way of giving consistency to experiences and in some way feeling that time is being lived, rather than slipping away, with all the integrity and authenticity possible.

It is interesting to reflect on the passage of time and to also be able to question ourselves about how and in what things we invest our energy, and what our purposes are. Introspection on these issues enables us to make changes and to be able to separate ourselves from the often automated dynamics that arise in the current system.

 

Thank You