Sometimes I have weird thoughts. Sometimes I like to type them into Google to see if anyone else was thinking the same thing. Here’s something I think about a lot. Someone on Reddit had the exact same thought and posted it. It’s always incredibly cool when that happens.
Here is the thing I think about a lot but at least one other person does too.
The mid-90s are as far away as the mid-70s were in the mid-90s. But mid-70s seems like another world to me, mid-90s seem like yesterday.
It’s kind of hard to wrap my brain around that. Even more bizarre is this:
1990 is as far away from 2015 as 1990 was from 1965!
😮
Or even:
1985 is as far away from 2015 as 1955 was from 1985! (but the 1980s are starting to seem kind of ancient to me actually).
The 90s just don’t seem that far away to me, but they are! I wonder if it’s just because I’m growing older and time is speeding up (at a rather frightening rate, too) or if people of all ages feel this way too. And if so, why? Did people who were the age I am now in 1990 think 1965 or the 1970s weren’t that far away? Do I just perceive a much larger gap of time from the 70s to the 90s or from 1965 to 1990 because I was much younger then? I think the culture has changed just as much in the past 25 years as it did in the 25 years before that. But the ’70s seem ancient (and sort of did in the 90s too if I remember correctly) and the ’90s don’t.
Why?
It’s because ten years represents 50% of your life when you’re twenty, but only 25% of your life when you’re forty, and if you get to eighty, then ten years is only 12.5% of your life. So a decade is pretty significant when you’re young, not so significant as you get older. MATHS, woohoo!
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Good answer.
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I think this too. Except even people a lot younger than me are talking about how quickly the past 10 years have slipped by. To me, the past 10 years seems like about 3 years. I was sort of shocked a few months ago when I realized 2008 was almost 8 years ago.
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I have heard similar things from younger people as well — people who (by my reckoning) are not old enough to be at the stage of thinking that the years are flying by.
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Actually, to me, 1965 doesn’t seem all that long ago…
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Well, we were just kids then… and the things that happened to you as a child are often easier to recall in later years than what happened last week.
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You’re right. Also, my worst traumas happened in 1965, when I was 12 years old. In a way, I have felt ever since then like I never stopped being 12. Which is apparently a thing that often happens with PTSD. But it is kind of eerie!
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It’s a common response to child abuse. I remember in my late teens getting to know a couple of young ladies my age who seemed very childlike, and then finding out that they had been horribly abused as children. Then it sort of made sense, in a bizarre way.
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I love stuff like this, the time-perspective stuff.
I had never thought of typing just a random thought! How interesting!
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I have a weird brain. It’s a constant source of entertainment for me and WTF looks from everyone else!
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The curse of genius!
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Well,now I wouldn’t say THAT! *blush*
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How do you know? 😉
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