I was thinking about how time seems to last so long when we are little, but as we get older time seems to speed up. I think some of this has to do with novelty. Maybe most of it.
But another cool idea hit me: what if this also has to do with our physical size off the ground? Imagine when you are in an airplane and looking down at the ground, how tiny everything seems. You can watch whole neighborhoods pass by in seconds. Then, imagine what life was like when you were a little kid, your height was 1 or 2 feet off of the ground. From that height, everything seems immediate, right there.. the world stretches away beyond what you can see. Everything is right in front of you, up close.
This could have something to do with our perception of time, because it is related to our perception of space and change. If we are up close in space to the world around us, things are very present. Changes are slow, or at least the changes we can observe are relatively small. A blade of grass moving in the wind, an insect crawling up a leaf. Stuff like that is what kids observe on a regular basis.
But as adults we do not observe things like that. We see a car drive down a long road, longer than any kid (based on their small height) would be able to see. We see entire structures, buildings, cities, distant sunsets and clouds. Kids do not really focus on those distant things, they are immediate in the space around them. They are so much closer to the earth.
Einstein said space and time are connected, the more of one we have the less of another. For kids and when we are small, our eyes barely above the ground, we have much less space… does this mean we also therefore have more time? If only in our own perception of things.
Yes, I think this makes a lot of sense.