I turned 45 this week. Do I feel like I'm 45? No. More and more often I get a sense that once you hit your 40's, 50's, 60's, and maybe even beyond, you never feel your age. Your body tells you otherwise. This birthday seems heavier than I feel like it should be. People make a big deal about turning 40, and an even bigger deal about 50. 45 is just a pit-stop on the road to the big five-oh. I think that heaviness come less from turning 45 and more from the year that it is-2024. Cue Galadriel's opening monologue from Lord of the Rings:
The world is changed.
I feel it in the water.
I feel it in the earth.
I smell it in the air.
Much that once was is lost...
Instead of the world being changed, it feels like I'm in the midst of a world that is changing-present tense. Much like Galadriel, I can see it happening in all facets of life.
We're growing increasingly disenchanted with social media and parts of the internet. The cell phone promised a world where we could be more connected and more free at the same time. No more cords tied us to home. We could now talk to each other, conduct business, go to the bank, attend meetings, book vacations all from a touch of a screen. Now that we've adjusted to its convenience the device has now become a weight we cannot escape; a tether, a chain.
In the U.S., politics has divided us into a people who are more concerned with winning than governing; being truculent instead of being reasonable or fair.
The seeming omnipresence of A.I. has creators running in fear which hinders their abilities to come up with new ways to rise above the threat. Instead they point at the impending doom and carry signs that the end is near. A flock of Chicken Littles crying that the sky is falling.
And here I am, forty five feeling insignificant, overwhelmed, overstimulated and unimpressed. If only there was one ring that ruled them all, we could destroy it and save the world.
Okay then...Let's do a quick pivot away from the realities of life and get back to the things that distract me from it-comics!