How Millennials Grew Up and Got Old
I think my own recent dwelling on this is of a similar vein.
It's realizing that I'm old enough to understand that I am, I'm fact ... Well, just older. And that this, in and of itself, regardless of other age groups, feels significant.
It's like a silent shift from "I'm living life!" (Which really, I did without even considering I was just living life) to "Wow, youth really IS wasted on the young!" It's like I woke up one day and understood that I will never have the blinders of youth on anymore. And I also don't know exactly what to do with it.
Like you said, Ezra, it's connected to the surface-level things... The "throwbacks" of fashion and music, feeling totally clueless about new technology, etc, do make me say, "Wow, guess I am old now, huh?" To the point of this piece, I think being millennials puts us in a more unique circumstance of "middle-age" experience, and that's absolutely worth talking about (thank you, AHP, for doing so in such a smart, detailed way!) However, my own feelings lately are less specific to being a millennial, I think, and more "universal" (?) in that aging (time/experience) is challenging my understanding of self. The surface-level things make it more obvious, of course. But, for me, anyway, it's felt very personal and universal at the same time. Like parenthood, or losing a very close loved one, something you can only understand once you've experienced it yourself.
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