I’ve been feeling really old for the last couple of years. At first I thought it was my end-stage renal disease taking its toll after being almost manageable for the last 10 years. Then I thought it was working in a university environment. Then I thought that I was just getting, well, old.
But, I don’t think it’s me. At least not just me. A neighbor—totally out of the preconceived image of him I held in my mind from previous conversations—caught me by complete surprise this morning with a comment about listening to Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” And his grin was all-telling and unmistakable. The weather’s been way above normal temperatures up here on the far edge for the past two days and has been stunningly beautiful, but still. Lou Reed’s entire Transformer album was breathtakingly ahead of its time.
Snippets like that encounter with a neighbor serve as examples of my feeling simultaneously completely connected and completely out of touch. At first, it was a new experience, and like all new experiences, interesting. Now it’s starting to get disturbing.
Then comes Douglas Coupland’s “A radical pessimist’s guide to the next 10 years” in the Globe and Mail. Coupland nails how I’ve been feeling with this bit:
“The future isn’t going to feel futuristic
It’s simply going to feel weird and out-of-control-ish, the way it does now, because too many things are changing too quickly. The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn’t feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.”
At least I hope that’s what’s going on.
I’ve been waiting for a Jetson’s future that never came. And the out-of-control future that I knew—I just knew somewhere in the dark recesses was coming—snuck up on me from behind.
This is not going to end well.
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