As I get older, I find myself becoming more nostalgic. I have very fond feelings of where and how I grew up and upon reflection of that time it’s interesting to reflect on it and compare it to the world today…but it’s even more interesting to compare it to a time I never experienced.
My parents (Baby Boomers) formidable years were in the 1960’s. They grew up, relatively, in the same location I grew up. From the 1960’s to the 1990’s, my formidable years, life was very similar. I know many people may perceive that as farfetched, but outside of the internet that became readily available for the average person in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, technological changes were incremental. Life, for the most part, was the same for my parents’ childhood as it was for mine. That’s 30+ years where an experience that was core to adolescents was available to all.
Fast forward to today and it’s unclear of whether I will truly understand the world my niece and nephew experience. The 30+ years of shared adolescents no longer exists. Life is fundamentally different and I’m constantly questioning if it’s possible to ever return to that shared experience that I reflect on so fondly.
I saw the movie ‘Rad’ in theaters recently. Fathom Events for the win. That movie came out in 1986 (the year I was born) and the BMX that was core to that movie was essentially the same BMX that I was doing with my friends in 2001. 15 years between that story in that movie and the real life fun that I had doing the same thing. Kids, roughly 5-10 years younger than my Dad were, at that time, experiencing the same thing that I would experience years later. Now, I’m not making the claim that BMX doesn’t exist today, I’m just pointing out the fact that life wasn’t that much different from 1976 to 1986 to 1996. That story could have taken place in any of those years, and with the exception of the clothing, it wouldn’t have been much different. Also, shoutout to Dans Comp and CCS magazine. I took those catalogs with me to every class until probably 10th grade, especially the Winter CCS that would have snowboards in it.
Compare that to today. Most kids don’t have the freedom or the means to experience any element of that movie. Even if they had the means, the world it too “scary” for parents to allow life to exist that way. The YouTube short by @DudeDad does a better job capturing the spirit of this better than I can.
That brings me to my question. Do you think there will ever be another era in human history where life will fundamentally exist in a similar manner for such a long period of time or are we at a point as humans where massive technological leaps and significant societal changes are going to occur every couple of years? Will generations ever be able to relate the way that Boomers related to GenX and then to their Millennial children?
The optimist in me hopes that things slow down but the realist in me knows that life will probably never exist the way it did for all of those years.