The world is not the same

I’m not sure how it happened, but one day I realized the world was not the same place I grew up in. I felt quite a bit like Rip Van Winkle.

I think growing up, I implicitly “learned” how the world is and how it works. Some of that undoubtedly was a naive perspective of a child or young adult. Some of it was living in fairly homogenous world view bubbles. You get a collapsed perspective on what the world actually is.

One day I realized I had not been paying attention. Some of it was inattentional blindness. Some of it was that the world actually had changed.

 There have been eras when the world view got upended – think late 1960s America. But there were also subtle waves across the 1900s and 2000s where the underlying philosophies of life started shifting. Not unlike when your own or nearby children are growing up. You don’t notice it day to day, and then one day, you realize they are grown. Lately I’m rereading a book about Generations (Jean Twenge) and realizing Gen X felt the same way. I venture to guess Millennials are on the brink of the same. 

I don’t know if the world is “grown.” But I had to recognize that it was not the same place where I grew up. There was a lot to learn about this new place that had snuck up around me and it was time to pay attention.