1999
Dear friends,
The passing of time is always happening, but sometimes it seems faster than others. One of the ways many people around my age measure time is the use of the year 2000. This being the anchor of how we know time has passed. However, as we know that was official 25/6 (depends how you want to look at it) ago. All I can say is, shit got real!
I’ve been thinking about things, like I normally do, but I've been thinking about when we all thought the world was going to change. The year 2K things were going to be different. I remember talking with a friend who was not in the country in 1999. The thing is, I remember all the things we did at school around the year 1999 and 200. Talking about all the millennium things that have gone up, dome, wheel, bridge. How it all was a big deal. Now some time later it's just something that happened. That is more than a little depressing.
When everything was rolling around, I think many of us thought that this was going to be the word moving forward, trying to do better. In some ways we did. We got better tech that moved so fast, that something you had a year ago was out of date. While other things didn’t really last the test of time. Do you remember when everything was in silver and chrome, it was the colour of the future. Now we hardly have any colour in anything, unless it's muted. I think a lot of people throughout it could only get better, and hindsight we are kinda right.
This is why when I think about it now, we didn’t see what was coming. I think in a way we kinda got what we wanted. We wanted more tech, and got things in a more easy way, but at what expense? The death of the high street, people making inappropriate images of people, and constant hate being spread online. So much for us living in the future. I know some say things have to get worse before they get better. I am waiting for the better.
As a 30 something year old teacher, who went to college 20 years ago, I always bring up the difference between now and then. One of things that keeps on coming up is the year 2000 and 90s being the olden days. This is done to deliberately be annoying, and also shows the lack of knowledge. However, when I think about it, I do wish to go back to have some of the older days in our lives. When things were simplistic and we didn’t know how good we had it. I honestly don’t think I would be able to handle being myself as a younger person in this modern age. Who knows, but I think growth and perspective play a part there.
Even though the year 2000 was a quarter of a century ago, and we are closer to 2050, than 2000! I will continue to live with my singular point of the year 2000. That little number in my head that is used to measure how long ago a thing was. Now don’t get me wrong, I know the year 2000 and early naughtiest were not perfect. I just feel something’s were just better in retrospect. It’s too bad the only way we would go back to it, would be to start the world over again.
Are you someone like me who thinks of the year 2000 as this big point in time? Do you think shit got a bit too, too real from the nice idea from a time long gone? Or should just let the sands of time continue, and accept that this is the less than perfect time we live in? I don’t know, all I know is, I miss Woolworths!
Xo FabEs
