If “Time Flying,” It’s Because Someone Else Owns It

You know who says “time flies”?
The ones who don’t actually control their time.

They say “it goes by fast” when talking about life, or “they grow up so quick” when talking about their kids, but of course it does.
If you live by the next deadline, the next weekend, the next day off, then yes… it’s all going to blur together.

If your life is a cycle of doing things you have to do for people you don’t want to do them with,  rushing to get through each day,  then of course time is flying. You’re wishing it away in little increments.

You drop your child off at the earliest time the facility allows. You pick them up as late as the center will stay open.

You might catch a few moments between dinner, homework, and bedtime, but not enough to feel like you actually saw them, not enough to notice the tiny shifts that happen in a growing mind, or the way their voice changed just slightly when they told you about their day.

And then one day, you look up, and they’re taller. More independent. And people say “time flies,” but really, it was you outsourcing your time to everything and everyone else that demanded it.

Time doesn’t actually fly.
It’s pushed by routines, by systems, by people who profit off your exhaustion. It slows down when you decide how to spend it, when you stop rushing through the days just to get to the parts you think you’ll enjoy.

You blink, not because life is short, but because you were never allowed to keep your eyes open long enough to live it.

Control your time, and you’ll find it doesn’t move nearly as fast as they say.

But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough:

Most people aren’t choosing this. They’re surviving it.

Time slips away because the day is designed to pull you in a hundred different directions, work, email, school, appointments, chores, screen notifications, and the mental load you carry alone. It’s not a character flaw. It’s not bad parenting. It’s not mismanaging time. It’s the weight of a system that “rewards” or rather, promotes burnout and calls it “commitment.”

But there are ways to take small pieces of your time back without completely overhauling your life.

Not perfection, but progress.

1.     Replace scrolling with creating a task list.

2.     Give yourself “screentime” for your phone.

3.     Exchange 10 minutes of rushing for 10 minutes of presence.

4.     Protect one moment that belongs only to you.

5.     Audit your “invisible time thief/thieves.”

When you do this, time starts to stretch again.

Not because your calendar changed, but because you did.  You stopped sprinting through your life long enough to participate in it.