There’s a lot of art and random commentary from people devoted to the idea that even as you age, you still feel like the same young person inside, and I think there’s a lot of truth to that. At least, in my experience so far, yes, it seems mostly true.
Except for one thing I’ve noticed.
Now that I’m in my forties, I have a sense of what a decade feels like. I didn’t used to have that sense. Not really.
Sure, in my teens, I’d lived through a whole decade already, and two of them in my twenties! But I was a kid for most of that time. It isn’t until pretty recently that I found myself looking at the span of a human life or the span of a century and feeling like I had any real understanding of how far apart various decades really are from each other. Some of them are much, much closer together than I had previously realized.
Anyway, I just don’t think that’s something you can have until you’re a good chunk of the way into your life, because the visceral understanding of how long ten years feels is something that you have to earn by living through it, several times, as you wake up into yourself more and more.
Because life is a process of waking up. Before we have to go back to sleep again.