No One Should be Born in a Year I Remember

Be forewarned: this is a young person becoming old rant. In it I will decry the youth of today, become aware of a process known as ageing and consider my own mortality.

I’m not sure if it’s the fact I’m working at a high school but lately I’ve been thinking about getting older. This year I will turn 25 and while that is hardly over the hill it still seems far beyond the age I feel. I’m not entirely sure how old I think I should be; teaching in a school of 16- to 18-year-olds certainly makes me feel different to that age group. If I had to put a figure on it I’d say I feel about 21 or so. OK, so not much younger than I am now but enough so I don’t have to think about having been alive for a quarter of a century (God, you feel old when you think about your age in terms of centuries).

It’s not the case that I thought I was going to live forever and have been delivered the news this is not the case. I always knew I wasn’t going to live forever. What I thought (as stupid as this sounds) was that I was it. That for whatever reason my generation was going to be the last. Procreation would stop and we would be left to carry the torch of humanity on alone. Once we were snuffed out that’d be the end of it and the universe would just have to move on. It is the dawning realisation that I am not the last of my people that has promopted this latest bout of navel-gazing.

Such a point of view seems only natural for my generation – roundly criticised for being the most narcissistic generation of all time (OK, maybe not of all time… I’m sure if you go back far enough there was a generation that were worshipped as gods and that must have done something to their heads). We have been raised to believe we are the centre of the universe and while you’re a child this is exactly what you are. Parents sacrifice for you, grandparents spoil you, teachers worry about you, anonymous strangers call on people to at least think of you. But then you grow up and (worse) are replaced by a new generation.

Of course I’ve been aware there were people born after me. I may be self-obsessed but I’m not that self-obsessed. But when they were all born prior to 1989 it seemed as if no one had been born after me. After all, who can remember 1988? Sure, there were some fireworks in there somewhere I think and I received a special coin but it’s pretty much a blur. However, this illusion breaks down rapidly the more contact I have with people born in a year I can recall. Or to be more precise a year after a year I can recall. If you were born in 1995 and I can remember 1994 this means I remember a time at which you didn’t exist. And if I remember a time at which you didn’t exist it means… I don’t know what it means exactly but it makes me feel old.

Time’s inexorable march forward hasn’t helped either. I remember when people projected things to the year 2000. Then it became 2010. Well we’re almost at 2010 and while I know there were other decades in there somewhere government officials, analysts and scientists all appear to have secretly agreed 2050 is what we project to now. But there’s a problem with 2050: I’ll be 68! I could quite possibly be dead. Who cares what the planet is like when I’m dead! Or at least very old! So the kids of today will be entering middle age then, so what? Now I’m reminded again there are other generations after me.

I’d like to say this realisation has led to some sort of personal growth on my part. And I don’t say that for self-centred reasons. Quite the opposite, in fact. It would be nice to think that the Me Generation had started to think about other people, that we had grown up and realised we’re part of something bigger, indeed that there is something bigger than ourselves. It’d be nice to be sure. But we wouldn’t be the Me Generation if that were the case, would we?