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Maybe the more emotions a person experiences in their daily lives, the longer time seems to feel to them. As you get older, you experience fewer new things, and so time seems to go by faster.
Douglas Coupland
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Experiencing a range of emotions can make time feel more expansive, while a lack of new experiences can make it feel fleeting.

In this quote, Douglas Coupland suggests that the richness of emotional experiences contributes to the perception of time. When individuals are engaged with new and varied emotions, their experience of time feels elongated. Conversely, as people age and encounter fewer novel situations, their perception of time accelerates, leading to a sense of life passing by more quickly. Coupland invites reflection on how our engagements shape our sense of time and existence.

Themes

EmotionsPerceptionTimeExperienceNovelty

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be shared at a birthday celebration to reflect on the passage of time.

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