"Time, time, time, see what's become of me. While I looked around for my possibilities. I was so hard to please"
As the seasons change, the transition from fall to winter becomes more visible. And we begin adjusting our clocks to catch up with the imminent end of another year.
Just about everyone agrees that time is passing very strangely since COVID-19 started in early 2020. Some days take forever, while months fly by, partly because there is so much "sameness" created by successive lockdowns and remote working. According to a survey conducted in the UK, more than 80% of participants felt like their perception of time had shifted during the lockdown restrictions compared to pre-quarantine times. People like me. I began writing this blog at the end of 2020 when I realized that my life had become an endless Tuesday loop, an eternal groundhog day. Since then, things have changed, but the feeling of being suspended in time is still quite the same.
And here we are! It's almost 2022, and with the omicron threat, our post-pandemic world looks not as post anymore. However, if the moronic repetition of the same tricks our memory to believe that time isn't passing by, the unquestionable fact is that time is indeed passing by. The upcoming of another year proves it and invites us to a reflection.
"What's become of me?" is a familiar question that we occasionally torture our souls at moments like this. It is about introspection and questioning what we did wrong. Simon & Garfunkel's "A Hazy Shade Of Winter" lyrics reflect on your journey up to that point. That point when seasons change, and fall's brown leaves remind us that another year has passed and winter's darkest hour is unavoidably on its way. This is where we are now.
I believe it will take years for us, or maybe the next generation, to look back and understand how this experience has changed us. But what I find most intriguing about what we are living today is the contrast of the sameness we have lived for a prolonged time, the newness that our society always celebrates, and the repetition of history. We search for references and clues in the past to understand what's going on and what will play out after trying to find confirmation that this will pass. As if the concept of time itself isn't enough to prove it certainly will pass.
However, when we want things to go back to normal, do we wish to go back just like before? If the answer is yes, I'm afraid this will keep repeating because time seems to be at the core of our current challenge. Time we have stopped, the time we needed to reflect, time passing by too quickly, and the time left to do anything before it's too late. This reflects the never-changing zeitgeist of the century. We live longer, and yet never before youth has been celebrated like now. We live in a time of progress, but progress in this era means newness. As a result, the idea of newness associated with youth became a simulation and a driver. From the latest gadget to staying young, newness is everywhere. It even seems like we are trying to re-engineer time itself so we can be and remain younger and anew forever. But, what we are experiencing isn't rejuvenation; instead, we only repeat an old formula.
But where did this idea start? There are many theories, but one that I find fascinating has to do with the contrast of newness, sameness, and youth culture's invention. It says that since the late 19th century, modernization and universalistic norms have encouraged the growth of youth culture. In addition, many societies use age grouping, such as in schools, to educate their children on societies' norms and prepare them for adulthood; youth culture is a byproduct of this tactic. Because children spend so much time together and learn the same things as the rest of their age group, they develop their own culture.
However, as we know them today, teenagers have only been a distinct part of the population since the 1950s. By this time, youth culture in film and popular music began to celebrate the years when young people were no longer children but not quite adults. As a result, young people suddenly became very conscious of their own identity.
Fast forward to Gen X, while divorce rates skyrocketed, and while parents focused on their own achievements, marketers saw a growth opportunity. They discovered the youth market at this time, and since then, this marketing group has been one of the drivers of the world's economy. Young people make such valuable consumers because they influence the purchasing decisions of their friends and family. Only in 2020, Millennials & Gen Z teens' combined spending power was nearly $3 Trillion.
It looks like the perpetual search for newness reflects nothing more than the needs of the world's economic engine to maintain our lifestyle. We are programmed to crave novelty all the time. We created an artificial novelty world to keep the machine working – if there's something new every minute, then what's new after all? Ironically what the pandemic offered to us was only sameness. Covid, Spanish Flu, Polio, AIDS. We find the very sameness in the repetition of each new pandemic time after time.
So, what has become of us? We want the world full of newness back again. We want the novelty that only offers us more of the same and simultaneously feeds the world's inequalities and disrupts the environment. It's an old story whose repetition led us to where we are now. And if we keep trying to stay young and new, it seems like we are only feeding an old cycle that is keeping us from trying something...eh...new.