I wonder where does the time go?
Each day I find myself rising and trying to find my way through a long list of tasks that need my attention. Sometimes I wonder why the list does not shorten, but it continues to remain steady. The list of course contains many of the same ones you have on yours—washing, cleaning, mowing, trimming, and a myriad of daily tasks: cooking, shopping, errands and other routines. Those are always on the list. Then I decide to add to the list constantly for my career—more writing, more music, more personal appearances. With each choice the list grows. Volunteering and public service makes the list also, adding additional hours and tasks to be done.
I was talking with someone this week, sharing how since April I have been trying to get a chance to plow my garden spot and get something planted, but between the to-do list and the rain, it’s just not come to pass.
That’s what got me wondering: Where does the time go?
It’s a question we all mutter when weeks, months or even years suddenly slip away unnoticed—a rhetorical sigh that captures surprise, nostalgia and a touch of regret about how fast life moves. It’s not asking for a literal answer (time doesn’t “go” anywhere physical); it’s an emotional outburst about the fleeting nature of our days, a modern cousin to the ancient Latin tempus fugit—“time flees.”
Science offers some comfort for why it feels this way. As we age, each year becomes a smaller slice of our total life so far. A year that felt endless to a five-year-old (20 percent of everything they’d ever known) is only two percent by age fifty. That’s the proportional theory of time perception, first laid out by philosopher Paul Janet in 1897. On top of that, our brains collect fewer fresh “novel frames”—distinct memories—once routines set in. The same commute, the same chores, the same deadlines blur together, so entire seasons vanish in hindsight. Even our mental “frame rate” slows; we simply take in fewer snapshots per second, making days race by like a video played at half speed.
I know that each day I aim at completing a number of tasks before I turn around and find it’s time to hit the hay—and then, in eight hours, I start again. That old idiom itself carries a quiet echo of simpler times. “Hit the hay” dates back to the early 19th century, when many mattresses were literally sacks stuffed with hay or straw. “Hitting the hay” meant flopping down onto that scratchy, farm-style bed at the end of a long day—the same humble origin behind its cousin phrase, “hit the sack.”
So here we are, lists unchanged, garden still waiting, another sunrise already on the horizon. The real wonder isn’t that time vanishes; it’s how little of it we notice while we’re living it. Maybe the question isn’t “Where does the time go?” but what we choose to do with the small, steady portion that’s still right here in front of us.
Find more of Randall’s writings in his books at the Store.
