Math in Real Life

I like Christmas, but I've noticed lately that each year it's crept up on me more sneakily. I barely have time to buy a small present for everyone, then it's there, and it's gone. This kind of bums me out, because I've always liked the build-up to Christmas Day during the month of December a bit more than Christmas Day itself. All the songs, and little rituals and decorations.

I told my dad once that sometimes it felt like time went faster than when I was a little kid, even when I didn't have much to do. Like, the actual divisions of time seemed shorter. An hour when I was a kid felt like maybe a half hour when I was in high school, barely enough time to complete anything. My dad said it was probably because everything seems longer and larger when the fraction of time you've spent alive is smaller. When you're three years old, one year is a third of your life. So one year feels like an ETERNITY, and winter seems impossible when you're starting summer. But when you're twenty, your fraction is bigger and you've got a lot more to stuff into it.

It was an interesting moment, because I had never thought of life in mathematical terms like that. I am not a naturally mathematically minded person, but I think it would kind of be cool to be. I work on it, every now and then.