I have always found structures that are decayed and dilapidated fascinating, and I know I am not alone. We are, as a species, fascinated with crumbling cathedrals, rusted factories, abandoned amusement parks, empty shopping malls, and rotting houses. Exploring any place where there was once life and activity—but there is no more—gives us a shiver and a quiver that is both unique and exquisite.

I suspect that this impulse is one we find both peculiarly satisfying and a deliciously frightening because it both reminds us of the strange transience of life and gives us a glimpse of our own impending mortality. The disuse, decay, and disappearance of that which at the time seemed never ending in the lives our parents’ and grandparents’ generations—such as a home, a store, a restaurant, a sports stadium, or a school—reminds us that our own too, too solid flesh will someday melt, and those places that were once our familiar haunts will someday be haunted only by our fading memories. This morbid streak is particularly virulent in adolescents and young adults, who find death a distant enough prospect to be titillating.

I remember many years ago visiting in a small town in upstate New York that shut down when the train line (so the story I was told went) switched from steam to diesel—and their station was no longer a necessary watering stop. Apparently, that very day all the shops and restaurants locked their doors and closed because their customer base of trainmen and passengers was, to quoth the Raven, never more. It was a fascinating snapshot of signage and advertising from many decades gone by and a reminder that the course of our lives is only nominally within our control. At any moment, our security and familiar lives can be jerked away by a sudden illness, a fluctuation in the economy somewhere on the planet—or a technological change that renders us, as the saying goes, redundant to present needs.

It is perhaps true that you don’t start to notice your age until you recognize how many people and places—the seemingly permanent fixtures of our obliviously unending youth—start to disappear without a trace. The shock of discovering that time moves in one direction only—surprisingly fast—is the end of youth and the beginning of nostalgia.

It should, of course, not be assumed that everyone looks wistfully back on their lost youth. Some childhoods are hard, adolescence can be difficult, and wading into the tumultuous waters of adulthood drowns not a few. 

However, for better or worse, our early life will serve as a signpost that points us toward the direction of the life we will lead. The people we meet (typically accidentally), the seemingly inconsequential conversations that somehow end up being the most important we ever have, the life-altering split second decisions we make free of forethought or fear, the obstacles and obstinate people we must overcome, and the shocks that come when we must face up to our own ignorance of others and the world we occupy create the satisfaction that follows when we finally start to learn to surf the unpredictable ocean of our lives and its many, many changes and challenges that form us as they determine the shape of our lives without our ever realizing it is happening. The stunning and sad reality of an old quote often wrongly attributed to John Lennon becomes more blindingly clear to us with each passing year: “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” It’s true. It’s so damned true.

We also note, as the past and the present we knew is ruthlessly obliterated by the rush of events, that our understanding of our world is starkly different from that of those who are now as young as we once were. Some of this chasm can, quite reasonably, be attributed to our broader life experience providing us with a more jaded view of the reckless passions that define youth. However, it also becomes apparent that the markers that used to define our world have either mutated or disappeared altogether. I still remember having to hunt for pay phones (what are those, you might ask) to check in with my office when I was out with a client, and I doubt few under a certain age have any idea what an extra charge for “failure to rewind” is all about.

On a more significant level, I am often startled by the blank spots so many of the students whom I tutor in my retirement have about aspects of our history or the cultures of other lands and people. Educating yourself through memes and TikTok videos is not going to provide the basis for well-reasoned judgments or decisions, and it often seems true that the inextricable and critical link between rights and responsibilities is lost on a great many young people today. In particular, the connection between the right to speak your mind and the responsibility to listen respectfully to others has gone the way of paper roadmaps and record stores.

I don’t feel old, but I do realize that I am older, which allows for a perspective on the people and the world around me that was not possible when I was galloping through my life forty years ago. I worry deeply about our country, but I also realize that we have seen much tougher times in the past and emerged stronger. A new cultural synthesis might be at hand, or we could be preparing to reject a good deal of the social engineering of the past half century—which it will be, I cannot say. 

However, whatever the shape of the ultimately unknowable future should be during the decades ahead, it will assuredly bring with it its own wave of nostalgia for the halcyon days of today—a time that now fills so many, both young and old, with unreasonable fears and nameless dreads. It will be the case, as it was for the now erased generations that trod this nation long before us, that a bit more tough life experience will teach many excitable young Americans to better manage their emotions as they become the elders of a nation that many times in the past has miraculously reinvented itself—and thrived—despite predictions of doom by those who sought wealth and power by spreading fears, selling snake oil, and promising utopia in exchange for our cash. 

Age does bring with it a certain wisdom that youth blithely rejects, and those who today are certain they have all the solutions will perhaps someday realize, much to their chagrin, that they were, in fact, part of the problems facing America as we navigate our current generation of fear mongers, snake oil salesmen, and purveyors of a utopia that is only a tax increase away.