Not Alone

I have discovered something recently: I am not the only old soul out there. Or, at least, the rest of my generation is starting to catch up to me.

While browsing Facebook the other day, I came across something peculiar. A trend began to emerge right before my eyes, unfolding as I scrolled farther down the page. Looking at all of the posts, all of the shared pictures and witty comments, I saw that my friends were expressing a nostalgia that I had never really seen before.

What were they so nostalgic about? The only decade my generation has ever truly known: the '90s. "Like this if you're a 90s baby", "Share this if you remember Lizzy McGuire's parent's names", "Like in 3 seconds if you played with a bop-it". Yeah. I get it. We played with toys that are no longer on the market and we watched shows that are no longer on TV. We want to relive that because it was a fun time in our lives! We were kids with no responsibilities and no heartaches (that is, unless your Slinky broke). I understand being nostalgic about an awesome family vacation or that one time you stayed up late secretly listening to your new S Club 7 CD, but being nostalgic about an entire decade? This is something that I haven't encountered before.

I grew up listening to my parents talk about "the good old days" of the '70s and I remember thinking about how old and dated it made them sound. Now we're talking about the '90s in the same way. I guess it's just a part of growing up.

While this realization is a bit startling, it does make me pretty excited about the future. My generation is the first that will essentially grow up on Facebook. We're going to be the pioneers who make the transition from posting pictures of college parties to posting pictures of our newborn children. And we have no examples of how to do that!

Maybe thinking so much about the future is something an old soul does, too. Maybe you finally cross the threshold of adulthood when you focus more on the past and future than the present. But to my fellow Facebook pioneers, '90s kids, and old souls, I'd like to say one thing: let's not forget entirely how to be kids. I don't mean that we should focus on the childhood we've left behind, but that we should focus on the present, the way kids do. There's a lot of great stuff going on today, in this moment, and someday we'll be nostalgic for 2012. Enjoy it while it's here. Cherish your past, enjoy the present, and get pumped for the future! Time is on your side because you're only as old as you feel.