Brain Time Warp
My brain time is wrong.
1) Somehow I just realized yesterday that I’ve actually been alive 30 years. Which is weird to me, because I still think, “Wow, I’ll be 30 someday.” Someday is next month, and that’s just confusing to me. It seems like it should be some big event, but it’s really just going to be another day that marks the passage of calendar time. Really, that’s how I’ve perceived all of my birthdays… But this one is my third decade marker.
2) I’m flabbergasted that people who were born in 1993 are 21. That’s really strange to me. They look like little kids to me. I mean, I look at 21 year olds and see little kids. I look at myself and see an older kid. Basically, people who are technically adults just seem like they are kids. ARE THEY?
3) I think I’ve lost a decade somewhere along the way, because I still think of 1994 as “ten years ago”. It still feels like that was 10 years ago? I still have clear memories and thoughts about that time, and I don’t really think I’ve changed too much in preferences and ideals since then… Despite the fact that I was actually only 10 at the time.
4) The strangest part is that I have kids, one of whom will be 10 soon. But, it doesn’t feel any different than when I was 5 or 10 or 15 and had younger siblings to take care of. It’s just a given that I have kids to take care of. I’ve never NOT had people to take care of, so having kids wasn’t some kind of event horizon that made me feel any different or like “an adult”. I have no idea what it will be like to have no kids to take care of in an everyday capacity… in 15 years’ time? I suspect by that time, there will be grandkids to take care of, and then I’ll still have the same relational feeling that I’m just a big kid taking care of younger kids. But, I actually enjoy taking care of people – I get happiness from spending time with people, just doing mundane stuff. So, it’s not a big deal.
5) I’m pretty sure I haven’t actually “grown up” yet. I am not convinced anybody actually grows up. I think, at some point, you just give up on learning or doing new and difficult things and then that’s when you physically/mentally become “an old person”.
6) I’m surprised I’ve lived this long, to be honest. I can’t even imagine living ANOTHER thirty years. Seems entirely too implausible to me. Then, in thirty years, the brain warp will be even more exaggerated. I’ll be like, “What, I’ve been alive sixty years?! I still think of 2004 as ten years ago! People born in 2014 look like little kids to me.” I’ll be completely incapable of considering that I could live an additional thirty years after that point, and I’ll be just as dumbfounded and weirded out as I am right now.
The more things change, the more things stay the same, I guess.