it doesn’t compute
I remember when I was a child (below 10 years old) and interacting with people ages 16-25 sometimes, like summer camps in elementary, school, retail and so on. I always admired them and greatly respected them, I thought they were so cool and smart and had it all together.
There were ~10-20 years difference between us. I am now 30. I often clash with older people at work, 45+, and it doesn’t compute for me that many of these are the same generation of people I used to interact with as a kid. In my head, those people I admired are still the same. No one ages in my memories. It’s weird to imagine that inbetween my childhood and now, that generation of people grew and changed too. Like, how can the kind of people I admired so much as a kid be belonging to the same group of people who are so rancid at work?
It’s all a mix of childhood wonder, adulthood idealization, nostalgia and the usual struggle to grasp how quickly time passes. When I meet a person, they seem to stay the way I met them in my head, and they can never be older or younger. You were never a kid and you’ll never retire. But if I meet you as a grandparent, you’ve always been that old.