I believe it was fifth grade the first time that a teacher told me “You’re the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be.” Even then, it was an interesting thought. It wasn’t exactly a revelation, but the notion had never once occurred to me in my approximately 4,000 days on Earth.
As an adult, though, this fact has only grown to feel stranger and stranger. It’s an odd idea, but a beautiful type of odd. Whether in our best moments or our worst moments, there’s just no escaping the new ground we’re breaking.
And the fact doesn’t only remain true for us. In each new moment, the entire world around us is breaking new ground. The neighbor mowing his lawn — he’s the most experienced that he’s ever been in his entire life, but also precisely as inexperienced as he’ll ever be again. The teacher corralling her students into a line — she’s living the latest day that’s ever occurred in all of history, and she’ll do the same again tomorrow.
The same can be said of each pedestrian zig-zagging their way across each metropolis. Whether old or young, rich or poor, Chinese, German, Iranian, or American, it’s ground that we’re all breaking together. And on this ever-spinning planet, it’s ground that we never stop breaking. No matter how hard we might try, or how desperately we might wish for an escape, there’s just no sidestepping our momentous present. It was true for the first hunter-gatherers and it was true for the ancient Egyptians.
A million people once simultaneously lived through the advent of fire. A billion people once simultaneously watched as a world lit up with electricity. And each of those people was living through that same, strange dichotomy that we are today. They were the youngest they’d ever been, living constantly and irrevocably through the latest days that had ever occurred.
It’s one of the few things that we all share. It’s one of the few things that we always have. We’re each mired to the present and we each make history with each passing moment. We’re each the first human beings to establish a relationship with computers. We’re the first to walk around with super computers in our pockets.
We’re the first humans to walk blindly into this cold world of code and data. We’re the first to confront artificial intelligence. We’re the first to contend with the destruction of our planet, and the collapse of its biodiversity. And though we’re every bit as attached to the present moment as each and every one of the people who came before us, our present realities are very different. Of course, it probably goes without saying that our ancestors didn’t have iPhones, drones, or virtual reality.
Yet, we’re still the same humans confronting the same novelty embedded into each ever-fleeting moment. We still struggle to grasp our place in time. That we all approach every new decision and obstacle with both unprecedented wisdom and unrepeatable naivety — it’s a nebulous idea.
It’s a challenging thought to grasp, but a strangely liberating one if you can manage to. Our present circumstances are always darker when we’re alone in them. It’s not just you who’s worried about the future, the rise of AI, and the ever-growing addiction to cell phones in our pockets. It’s not just you who looks at the challenges ahead and feels small and impotent. It’s not just you who feels defeated when you face off against the undying overflow of stimuli that our digital world has wrought. It’s not just you who feels numb.
When we remember that it’s all of the people — all of the time — who feel these feelings… we feel less alone in them. The world is a dangerous place and the future is an uncertain one. But to walk into this profound uncertainty — all of us together — with more knowledge and experience than any of us have ever had, and less than we’ll ever have again… there’s a beauty in it. We’re the oldest we’ve ever been, and the youngest we’ll ever be. Always.