Harder To Be a Human
There is a saying that you’ll never be younger than you are today. I guess it’s not just a saying because it’s actually true. Whatever age you are today, tomorrow you will be that age + one day.
I’ve never quite understood the point. Is it that it’s easier to do many things when you’re younger, so if you wait to get things done, you’re making it harder on yourself? Or to not waste today because it’s technically part of your youth, even if you’re 89 years old?
It was in my head because we’ve been talking a lot in our house about whether today is the easiest day to be a human because tomorrow will be that much harder. And then that much harder the day after, and so on.
On one hand, it feels true. It feels like the world was easier in many regards when I was younger. But maybe that’s just because the hard things turned out to be surmountable because we surmounted them. I remember worrying a lot prior to this point. Maybe the media didn’t foment our anxiety to the same degree, but that doesn’t mean the anxiety wasn’t there.
A certain percentage of people have struggled terribly to meet (or failed to meet) their basic needs. A certain percentage of people have not struggled at all to meet their basic needs. And the vast majority of us are in the middle, worrying about how we’ll meet basic needs, sometimes making sacrifices we don’t want to make, but ultimately meeting our basic needs.
Is it harder to be human today? Will tomorrow be that much microscopically harder than today? Or, unlike the original idea about aging, do changes come around in time to help us move forward again?
4 comments
Don’t the answers to those questions kind of all depend on what the US congress decides to do (or not do)?
That’s true (somewhat) if you live in the US. But even then, everything happening politically impacts different groups… differently. But is life harder today than it was in 2005? Will it be harder in 2045?
Pretty sure if we go to war with Europe or try to capture Greenland or help Putin capture Ukraine or allow Trump to set off a nuclear bomb that that’s not going to just affect the US. It’s going to destabilize modern society as the world knows it. No country is safe if the normal is colonization and might makes right and so many countries have nuclear bombs.
2005 the world had gotten out of a recession. Gay marriage was starting to become legal across developed states and nations. Racism and sexism and homophobia still existed but there was hope that things were going to get better. And they did get better for a while, though still not perfect.
I feel as if the statement “you’ll never be younger than today” is just a reminder of passing time, and making the most of that time while you have it. It’s never been more real to me than the last year. Geopolitics aside, today (or right now) is the only day we can be sure of.