Why Does Time Fly as We Get Older?

I once overheard a coworker of mine saying that time flies after the age of 25.  Being only 16 at the time, I wondered if it were true.  Now I know it is.

Today as I was thinking about all the things I have to do (and how much faster time seems to fly on Friday than any other day), I remembered back to the conversation with my friend about just why it is that time flies so fast when you get older.

Do you remember how it was as a kid?  Time was really slow then.  A month was like forever.  Summer vacation -- that was heaven.  One year -- wow, it never ended.  But now, it seems like in the blink of an eye, it's the new month, the new year, the new decade.  Where did all that time go?  I know it could not have gone far as time is constant.  It doesn't change from person to person, and yet for the more experienced, it seems to go by faster. 

It occurred to me though that perhaps the reason that time appears to be going faster is because we have so much more to do.  The older we get, the more responsibilities we have, and so, the more we have to do.  We learn a lot, and the more we learn, the more we have to accomplish, and sometimes there just isn't enough time in the day to accomplish everything we want.  Most children don't have this problem because children have less responsibilities.  Remember what you had to do as a kid?  Schoolwork?  Chores?  Anything else?  No.  Not really, unless you had a pet, or circumstances that resulted in you having more responsibilities to bear.  But most children have very little to think of (in America, at least).  As an adult though, you have bills, licenses, taxes, health care, cooking, a job, spouse, kids, car, house, etc. etc. to think of and take care of in the same span of time you got as a child.  No wonder you feel you have no time.  To accomplish all you want, you really don't have any.  I suppose that's why they say that the best thing to do is to simplify your life.  It's having too much to do that can make it stressful and hard to deal with. 

Furthermore, as a child, you spend most of your time waiting.  You wait for your parents to buy you the toy you wanted, for your parents to pick you up from school, for you to be tall enough to turn on the lights or ride the roller coaster, for you to be old enough to drive a car.  I think that's the reason why time goes so slow for kids.  They're constantly waiting for something or waiting until they're old enough to do something better, something prohibited to them because of their age.  That's probably the reason why 21 is the best age to be (so we think), just because it's the last age where most things that were prohibited to us as kids, are no longer prohibited to us.  But what if things were still prohibited to us, would time go slower for us and would we yearn to be older?  I remember my friends and I hoping to be 25 so that we could go on a cruise by ourselves.  It sounds dumb, and we didn't go on a cruise, but something in human nature loves overcoming an obstacle.  It's about being able to do what was denied us.  We love that.  Even if we don't do it.  We love knowing that we now are able to do it. 

So there you go, the reason time flies is because we have so much to do and there's nothing better for us to wait for (it seems).  But what if we could do less and at the same time, have something worth waiting for?  Wouldn't that bring us on par with children in terms of seeing the motion of time?  Wouldn't time slow down for us then?  Perhaps what we need to do is to find something to prohibit ourselves from having until we are older.  It has to be good and well worth waiting for.  And then perhaps, time will seem to drag as it did before.  As anyone who has watched the clock at work knows, time goes really really slowly when you're waiting for something better.