Why We Never Stop Changing, at Every Age

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There's a funny scene from the show Malcolm in the Middle that really resonated with me. Malcolm explains to his brothers the difference between acceleration and velocity. When people are in a vehicle that starts to move very fast all of a sudden (acceleration), it’s impossible not to feel it, and it can feel very intense.

But once the vehicle maintains a constant speed (velocity), people habituate so much that they don’t notice how fast they’re going, and it may not even feel like they’re moving at all. But this doesn’t change the fact that they’re going at a very fast speed. This happens to any of us who drive on a highway, ride in an airplane, or take a train.

The Illusion of Stagnation

I think something similar happens to people in psychology across their lifespans. There’s a popular saying attributed to the ancient philosopher Heraclitus, “The only constant is change,” meaning that life is almost always in motion rather than stationary. But even as people continuously change, if we change at a relatively constant pace, we may not notice it very much daily or even year-to-year. This creates the false impression that we’re stagnant or motionless when, in fact, we’re moving fast through life but at a relatively constant speed. One might call this an “illusion of stagnation.”

Think about the periods when you felt the most intense life changes. They were probably in adolescence and young adulthood. These are life periods during which people experience dramatic shifts in their relationships, emotions, and identities and rapidly experience those changes. The pace of this change makes it very noticeable.

This is the “acceleration” period in life. But by the time we reach middle adulthood, the pace of change slows down, and we reach a more constant speed of psychological movement. This is the “velocity” period of life. We’re still moving quite fast, but the speed itself doesn’t fluctuate much, so it doesn’t feel as dramatic.

Changes in Self-Esteem Across the Lifespan

Research on people’s self-concepts supports this idea. For instance, studies on self-esteem show that people experience high feelings of self-worth in childhood, followed by a sharp decline in adolescence. Then, the average person feels a gradual, steady rise throughout adulthood (until old age).

Thus, any given year in an adult’s life after age 30 probably won’t feel like a monumental emotional shift (with exceptions for monumental events such as the birth of a child). People generally perceive less change not because everything is objectively the same but because the rate of change is the same and slower than in their younger phases of life. This might also explain why people sometimes crave more excitement and novelty after one or two decades of adult life, which some colloquially call a “mid-life crisis.”

There’s a sense that one has in middle adulthood that a lot of time has passed by, somewhat unsuspectingly, and people suddenly realize they don’t have their entire lives ahead of them. In this state of mind, people may not necessarily want to time-travel back to their younger selves. But they might crave the subjective feeling of more rapid movement and growth.

Conclusion: Life Moves Fast and Slow

I began by sharing from a TV show, and I’ll end with my favorite film, Waking Life. In it, two women talk together about their experiences of growth and change. They reflect on having a mindset when they were younger that at some point in middle adulthood (perhaps in their fourth decade), the pace of life would basically stop.

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They muse together about their shared realization that this was false and that their lives are still filled with development and exhilaration. I’m not sure why, but I always found this idea strangely comforting. I know that no matter my life stage, I’m always moving, shifting, or evolving in some way. And it’s going to be that way until my life ends.

Reading this, do you take comfort in these ideas? How do you feel about the pace of change in your life now? Does it feel different than a different period in your life? How does your life pace compare to that of other people you know?

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