One of the keys to well-being for older adults lies in chronoception, the perceived duration of time. Anyone over a certain age can well attest to how time sense has changed. In childhood, the two months of summer felt like an eternity; with advanced age, those same two months seem to fly by in a blink. For aging adults, it seems as though time’s velocity increases with each advancing year. Grasp it as much as we may want, we cannot stop the clock. There are, however, ways to reconnect with that long-ago sense of growth and change.

Is it possible to recapture that sense of slowed-down time? Einstein did it:

“People like you and me never grow old,” he wrote a friend later in life. “We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”

Novelty and curiosity are the food of childhood. We seek out, explore, and immerse ourselves in situations with the potential for new information and/or experiences. This is the key to vitality: It is how we, as older adults, can grow via our own activity rather than submit........

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