What do you do at those moments or on those days that it seems like time is flying by? Does that dampen your spirit or maybe depress you a little?

Time is constant; however, how we observe time in our minds is not. With this article I would like to see if it is possible to adjust our outlook of time. Can we slow it down? What does that even mean?

When you are a child, time is very slow. You probably remember the summers when it seemed you did many things with your parents. If on a trip, it would be a long trip no matter whether it was a long weekend or several weeks. In your mind you felt that the summers were long. Yet, of course, that meant the school year was even longer. Holidays were nice and lasted quite a while but then you went back to school.

As you progressed in age, it seemed that the summers you knew were being shortened. The school year was either staying as long as it had been or seeming even longer. Time didn’t seem as fair as it had been.

Speaking of fair, state or local fairs you may have attended were long weekends and yet, they lasted quite a while as a child. Then as a teenager or high schooler, you felt that they must have been shortened in some way. It was nighttime before you knew it and the end came abruptly. Same with vacations and holidays as your age progressed.

Why was this happening, you may have asked? You thought time was constant so how does it feel shortened? As you grew into adulthood, had a family, were in a stable job, reached middle-age, or experienced retirement, time kept speeding up. You may have even spoken some choice words over this phenomenon. After all, this was your life and you would like it to last. You would like to stick around. Enjoy the consistency of time.

You may have thought that time wasn’t on your side. Maybe you didn’t understand the cosmos and time was really creeping up from behind. Time was going to bite you. It was going to push you faster whether you liked it or not. It didn’t matter how you thought of it, time was the big bad wolf. And in the mirror, what big eyes you had. Was that you or the wolf?

What if I told you that what you saw in the mirror was you? Time itself, though a constant, is very different in your own mind. Time is a comparison, the difference between your beginning and your current age. A constant denominator with a variable numerator. That is if you decide to allow the denominator to be a constant. But is there a way to make it also a variable that can change with our thoughts?

Look at things this way. When you were 5, the coming year would take up one fifth of the time which you had already existed. That’s a big chunk of time for you so that next year will be very long. Now you are 20 and next year will take up 1/20th of your lifespan so far. That is much shorter than one fifth of your 5-year-old lifespan. And so, on and on it goes. When you are 50, it will be 1/50th. That sure became a lot shorter.

Though time is constant, how else would your mind work it out? Your mind most likely doesn’t contain a clock ticking second by second, minute by minute. But it does have an internal clock of sorts. To me, that’s the comparison factor. But what if you compare a different specific time to the current time. It’s not tricking your mind, it’s using it. So how would this work?

Say, for instance, you just turned 50. You are feeling older and are feeling that time is just speeding by. In this scenario, your mind has used the default comparison it always uses. The day you were born. But, as discussed, this was a long time ago and so your mind is using the comparison of this moment to 50 years. So, at this moment, on this day, in this minute you experience a fleeting instant in your 50-year life. That is truly fast.

Now, let’s look at this in a different way. Maybe five years ago your son or daughter graduated from high school. If you happen to feel that this is also a long time ago, you can use your mind to replace your default. By doing that, you have effectively slowed time. Not actual time, not time for everyone, but the time you experience.

You may want to use another birthday or another event that was important. Any event that will be enough for your mind to change the default. The key, of course, is the default. It is important to use an event that is very memorable. A vague memory will most likely not work. Using a shorter-term memorable event works very well for me. I hope it does for you, too.

If we can do this with our minds, we can do so much more. Our minds store so many events that we may be able to use. Can we look at a time in the past when we changed our situation using that to change a condition occurring today? How about in the future? Yes, we can change the future for ourselves. We are the only ones that can.

• Reed Harris is a longtime Rochelle resident and community volunteer.