Getting old is weird
In a few years I'll be 40, and it's weird to think about it because, in my head, I'm still the same person I was 20 years go.
Don't get me wrong, I don't act like a 20-year-old, but I still enjoy very much the same things and, internally, work the same way through difficulties and the challenges life throws my way. Since most of the people I interact with daily are around my age, and I've known quite a few of them for more than 10 years (at least), I don't notice the generational gap that currently exists between me and society at large.
Obviously, as I got older, I learned more things, internalized some others, changed opinions on some stuff, and refined previous knowledge I had. But these things are so gradual that you only notice it when you have to interact with someone 10 or 15 years younger than you and suddenly go "oh, you have no idea what I'm talking about" since they have this vacuum in their knowledge, not because they didn't learn it in school or something, but simply because they haven't lived long enough to fill in the gaps.
And let me be clear: this doesn't mean older people are always right and yadda-yadda. Older people can still be dumb, and I've been dumb plenty of times too. But if you are curious enough and try to expand your knowledge not only about the stuff you do, but about the rest of the world, you will start to absorb information that can redefine or recontextualize what you think you know.
In other cases, though, being alive longer just confers a different point of reference about the world and how things are, compared to how they've been and to how it was promised they would be. This doesn't mean the past is always better, but having lived in a world before Uber, Airbnb, algorithmical social networks, and so on, does give you a different perspective on the workings of modern society, on things that people born in a world already dominated by this stuff will never know in practice.
I mean, holy shit, I lived in a foreign country in a time before smartphones were a thing, and wifi was considered a luxury. There was no Google Translator and no Google Maps at your hand to help navigate human interactions and city traffic. Do you have any idea how hard it is for people born in the current society to imagine that? Even I wouldn't be able to drive nowadays without something like Waze. Just consider that, until 15 years ago, something like the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was pure fiction but, now, every person on the planet has something analogous to it in their pocket.
So, while my mind in itself hasn't changed and still think I'm a 20-something, I actually have accumulated tons of information and have a lot of real-life references and experiences to siphon through before emitting an opinion or analyzing something that is happening. And it is only noticeable when interacting with people younger than me1 and who aren't a part of my typical social circles.
This explains so much about social dynamics, especially if not everyone becomes aware of the differences between generations and doesn't try to find a common ground to communicate. Nowadays, I'm not even sure if I talk about Slash2 or say "that's just, like, your opinion, man"3, people younger than me will understand what I'm saying. And I know that I wouldn't understand half of the slang they use if my job didn't require researching how people actually talk in the real world.
I've been contemplating a lot about life and the passage of time because of that. The 90s are as distant from the current year as the 60s were from my teenage years in the 90s, so I try to remember how I saw the 60s back then to try to understand how people nowadays see the 90s. Or how I used to see people in their 40s back then, to try to understand how younger people currently see me.
Anyway, I don't have a point or anything, it's just weird how much the perception we have of ourselves doesn't really align with the passage of time, and how that hits like a freight train when you are interacting with adults in their early 20s.