The idea for this piece came whilst I was looking through old playlists. Flicking through bundles of vibes created by my younger self, I was floored when I opened La La Land’s soundtrack —Mia and Sebastian’s Theme always hits me, as it’s the first song I ever learnt, (properly), on the piano — and checked the date. Could it really have been nine years since that movie came out? Seized with a terrified anxiety about my pending status as a social geriatric, I plunged through a number of culturally important things to obtain some cultural timestamps. Pokemon Go was 2016; Reels (my personal source of brainrot) – 2020. The last Harry Potter movie released in 2011, and London 2012 was over a decade ago. Modern Family finished in 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in 2019. I’m now as far from my birth, 2006, as people in 2006 were to the first Starbucks, the building of Disneyland Paris, the first time the Simpsons aired, and the last time Thatcher won an election.
This bevy of terrifying news left me running my hands through hair which felt a bit thinner, feeling more aches and pains than moments prior, and with one enduring thought:
Where the fuck did the last five years go?
The pandemic unarguably took time away. Spending the better part of two years in a dark room, living life through a screen, and sleeping too much probably set back my perception of time by at least two years. Even after lockdown, time felt uncanny and rushed, like someone was playing a lecture at 2x speed. Everything seemed too fast, too impermanent — nothing seemed to have the sticking power it had prior to the world shutting down. I’m not sure about you, but I haven’t got many real memories from that time: the monotony didn’t even generate insightful lore. But I feel like something more was lost over those years away from the world. Maybe it’s just the standard process of growing up, but doing so whilst deprived of those bonds of friendship, absent from society and the interests that can sustain you, can’t have helped growing up fast in a narrow world.
So what? You’re a bit creakier and grumpier than your contemporaries. Why complain? Growing up fast is a virtue — maturity, experience, all that jazz. I don’t disagree, experience is important in the right places. Considering current affairs, I’d like my pilots to know how to keep the plane in the air, and whilst I love my med friends, they can stay far away if I need surgery. The life you’ve lived, in lockdown, at uni, influences how you move forward. You don’t suddenly become the person you are today without your past experiences, good and bad.
But is it really so good to be ‘wise beyond your years’? I hate to cite Freud, given how he’s generally a weird bloke. But his idea that you only know you were in the good old days once they’re behind you has never been more relevant. The popularity of nostalgia, recalling an apparent past, illustrates that people clearly ‘miss’ their childhood. Childhood lacks the freedom of university and adulthood, but there was an innocence, born from a time where hard decisions weren’t yours to worry about. Everyone you knew was still alive, and around — you had yet to mourn, or to miss, anyone. Adulthood isn’t bereft of benefits though: for the first time in your life (within reasonable confines), you’re treated as a full person. Not an impressive yet still partial replica of an adult – someone totally entitled to the freedoms of a citizen. Despite that stiff separation between youth and adulthood, there is still an inexorable pressure to “grow up,” as fast you can. The constant churn of secondary school, if grasped totally, is designed to cast off any vestiges of childhood that cling to a student. Working beyond what’s normal for a kid might be impressive at the time, and net some fancy certificates and plastic trophies, but is it worth the loss of that wholesome foundation for the rest of your life?
It’s a bit late now to complain — that era of childlike innocence is gone. There’s no reclaiming lost youth and innocence after a freshers’ night spent in Plush. There’s no need to accelerate what life will do naturally through the interminable process of aging. Enjoy what it is to be alive and young now, and take life as it rolls. I’ve started accepting that some days I’ll make a mistake, or finding motivation to work might be that bit harder, consciously rejecting the nutty advice of ‘successful’ figures like Musk to work 24/7, 366. There’s no need to rush towards some manosphere-fuelled misconception of maturity. Just let life move as it will, and take things as they come. Trying to grasp for the rudder, to totally control the direction you’ll take, is impossible, and in doing so you’ll deny yourself whatever joy can be found.