On time & dying

I’ve heard more than once in recent days that “time moves too fast.” It’s a common phrase, but one that deserves closer examination. Speed is always relative. A car traveling at 170 km/h is fast, until compared to a plane. A snail is slow, until compared to the growth of the tree. So what exactly is “time moving fast” being compared to?

Time itself doesn’t move at different speeds. It is constant and unchanging. The experience of it, however, is not. When life feels repetitive or directionless, days blur together. Time feels like it’s slipping away because it is no longer anchored by meaningful moments. In this sense, saying that time moves too fast may reflect a sense of disconnection from one’s own life. When experience is shallow or distracted, the passage of time becomes harder to grasp.

Modern society reinforces this disconnection. Death, once a visible part of daily life, is now hidden behind hospital curtains and legal formalities. Its absence from public consciousness fosters fear and denial. Without reminders of mortality, there is little pressure to reflect, prioritize, or live deliberately. Instead, life becomes governed by distraction and short-term goals.

Consumer culture and work structures exploit this condition. People are taught to measure time in productivity and to locate meaning in career success or material acquisition. Time becomes a commodity, divided into billable hours, optimized routines, and monetized experiences. Stillness is discouraged. Presence is rare. Satisfaction remains elusive.

The result is a form of existential vacuum. With mortality ignored and meaning outsourced, people stay in constant motion to avoid confronting the void. The slow movement offers a response, an invitation to reclaim time through attention and presence. Practices like memento mori, the deliberate remembrance of death, restore perspective. In recognizing the limits of time, life gains weight.

This is not a prescription, only an observation. These thoughts are not meant to unsettle but to examine the conditions shaping how time is felt and how life is lived. If time feels like it is accelerating, the solution may not lie in trying to slow it down, but in learning to inhabit it more fully.

In the end, time is not a force that rushes past. It is space we either occupy or neglect. Dying gives it shape. Living gives it meaning.