[OK, so now I’d better actually write some stuff.]
Recently we’ve established social contact with the son of one of my cousins, and his girlfriend. Nice young people. It’s been a curiously disturbing experience, though. Here are people who are a whole generation younger than us, but nevertheless adults. Weird. When you reach middle age you think (well, I thought) that life would run out of novel experiences to show you. But it doesn’t.
Working at Google, I have this experience every day, as the average engineer is probably about 28: not quite a generation by years, but certainly so in terms of the world they’ve lived in (internet, no Cold War, etc). I’ve been suprised that the longer I spend with them, the younger I feel. Maybe I’m just getting better at understanding them without them having to talk slowly. I also take inspiration from a gift that Ellen got for her last birthday from a neighbour who is ten years older than us, which has the slogan on it: “if you don’t grow up by middle age, you don’t have to”.