Tonight, as the clock struck midnight, I was watching a movie. In this movie, young Mark Ruffalo returns to his home town to borrow money from Laura Linney, hang out with his nephew, and generally just f*ck sh*t up. Now, anyone who has seen Mark Ruffalo's Instagram lately knows that he is looking pretty old. So I came to wonder, how is it that he looks so young in this movie; it was only made in 2000 after all.
But then I realised. 2000 was 16 years ago.
16 years ago. That's almost my entire life (kind of).
16 years ago I was 7 years old, the London Eye opened, and the PlayStation 2 was released for sale in Japan. 16 years ago Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published and Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win a Grand Slam.
It was a different world.
Someone told me ages ago, that the reason the years go by faster as we get older, is because each year is a smaller fraction of the life you've already lived. I can't imagine what it must be like to be 80; the years must pass by like seconds.
I don't remember much about being 7. But I do think the years passed more slowly back then. Probably because I had no concept of time and nothing much changes from year to year when your schoolwork is colouring and learning to tell the time. I do remember this weird play I was in called Millennium Bugs though.
I remember feeling so old when I was a child, thinking that I'd already squandered away my youth. But really I squandered away my youth thinking that I squandered away my youth. I'm squandering away my youth right now eating nectarines in my underwear at 3am looking at pictures of Marty McFly on Google Images. There is a lesson to be learned here, probably.
I feel like when I'm 100 years old, and on my deathbed with only moments of life left, I will think back to all those little moments in my life; moments when I was bored, or miserable, or wasting time doing absolutely nothing of value - and be filled with regret at the fact that I spent them bored, or unhappy, or wasted them away. I will regret thinking that I was old when I was young. I will regret thinking that my life was hard when it was easy. I will regret that I wished moments of my life away when I'm old and want nothing more than the wasted time back.
I'm just so afraid of one day looking into the mirror and seeing an old face staring back at me, and wondering how this old guy got into my house, and which retirement village he escaped from, and having to call the cops.
You either die young or you grow old. It's a tragedy. Mark Ruffalo. Julie Andrews. Me. All subject to the mercilessness of time. I wish I could go back to when I was 7. One day I'll probably wish I could go back to right now, and stop writing this blog and do something more important like save the whales or adopt an orphan. Or maybe I'll just hope that when I'm 100 I have Dementia so that I don't have to remember this abject, wasted life.
