Live an Adventure

Life should be lived like an adventure: within our bounds and if possible, of course. There’s no reason to restrict yourself to the bounds of the leading rules, other than the slight fact that we may need to abide by them to survive and get by. But forget about that for now. Life is a one-time experience; live it.

Life seems to fly past us as we age: is it a property of aging, or that of our cunning brains? Maybe you could argue it’s a property of both working together. Through aging, our brain invokes the ability to speed up time. And why would it do that? For what purpose?

To be more efficient. We are constantly processing signals from our surroundings, the sensations and data that create our experiences. And processing is computationally heavy work. It requires energy and time; time and energy that could be used for more pertinent things. Maybe there are more relevant things: things with much higher priorities, and even slightly higher. Does our brain need to spend this energy on this thing? There’s a constant tug and pull for resources here. Efficiency is efficient. We have to save that time and energy.

The reason time flies by as we age is because we have experienced most of what we experience, and our brains already know the answers and expected outcomes. This is all cached in our memories, so we no longer need to spend time processing the sensory data as an experience; there’s no need for it. Instead, we can simply shortcut it and move on quickly to the next task. What does this result in? An automatic way of living.

Once we have experienced all we are experiencing in the present and future, our brain shortcuts our living experience and we fall into an automatic living where the majority of our lives do not bubble up to the higher levels of consciousness. Yes, you are still doing them, but you are not focused on them. And that lack of focus, that missing focus, is what makes time feel fast.

Everything slows down when you focus on the here and now. But now, we no longer need to focus because we have already experienced this experience and we already know how it will be. Living in this automatic state is much more efficient and easier. Our lives simply pass by silently and efficiently: which is good for the brain and our subconscious living, but not so much for our conscious living.

It is the curse of routines. Our early days are spent learning, learning, and learning. We are constantly experiencing and processing new things and new life, transitioning through many states and livelihoods: from our bodies themselves growing, to our environment changing from school to school and from work to work. But once we have settled into an older life with a routine and a day-by-day that is repeatable and can be compressed as a single routine, time simply flies by. Our brain compresses it all into a single living experience, which may span decades but is felt as much less.

Which is why we need adventure! Live life like an adventure! Adventure will waken up your soul and heart; it will also wake your brain and force it to process, waking your consciousness to the present moment. It wakes you up and demands your focus on the life ahead: to make executive decisions and experience this new breadth of life. With many more adventures, your life will feel full and slow and long. You will feel as if you have lived many, many lifetimes. It is a true way to live. Though it is effortful and inefficient, it is joyous and beautiful.

You cannot become automatic if your brain cannot predict what is to come next. It needs your attention for the fog ahead. And that attention will make you feel alive, making you feel like time has slowed. Because we need to focus to process and perceive.

So live life like an adventure: so that you can live longer and forever. Make your brain process over and over, new things all over, and you will live as much as you can. We are only here once, after all. One and only.