Time is. Time was.
I have recently discovered the old Play for Today series on YouTube, which aired on BBC One during the 1970’s and 1980’s, and I’ve been working my way through them. Last night I watched one from the mid-1970’s, when I myself was a teenager. It set me thinking: a man of 65 in 1976 would have been a teenager in 1926. The thought made me feel suddenly ancient. Back then, 1916 seemed impossibly distant, almost prehistoric; it was hard to imagine that someone alive and ordinary had actually lived through it as a young person. And it made me realise why younger people now look at my own generation in much the same way, as though the 1970s belonged to another world entirely.
Recommend0 recommendationsPublished in Senior Chatters
I seriously do try to avoid doing this to myself, and instead look at positive aspects. In a lot of ways we ARE younger in mind and body compared to our parents and grandparents. Many of them considered themselves to be old in their 30s and 40s whereas I didn’t feel that way even in my 50s, and now in my 60s I actually have to remember and remind myself that I’m not as young as I once was and so therefore need to be more careful when doing certain things so that I don’t come a cropper due to age related mishaps or limitations.
“DJ You are absolutely right about how much younger we are in mind and body compared to previous generations—and thank goodness for that! (And yes, we definitely have to be careful not to ‘come a cropper’ when our 25-year-old brains outpace our knees!)
But I think you slightly missed my drift. I wasn’t actually lamenting getting old or feeling physically decrepit. It was more a philosophical observation about the surreal, mind-bending nature of time itself.
It’s the realization that to a teenager today, the 1970s feel just as ancient, distant, and ‘prehistoric’ as the 1920s felt to us when we were kids. It’s less about how old we feel, and more about the bizarre realization that we have now become ‘history’ in the eyes of the young, just like the Edwardians and flappers were history to us.”
I agree with you, Bogman! The 1970s seem really not that far away but when I think exactly how long ago they were, I realise that time really does go so fast!!
Yes Pixel, quite so and I was somewhat taken aback recently when dwelling on an occurrence that took place in 1990, which to me feels like it’s just around the corner, was over three decades ago. As James Joyce wrote: ” They lived and loved and laughed and left.”
Absolutely!