So it was Christmas Day and my dad had dug out some old home movies. He’d hooked a chunky VCR to the TV with three colour-coded cables that would baffle anyone under twenty. The family, full from dinner and a little boozy, watched and laughed at our younger selves.
We saw clips of my mum and dad’s wedding. We saw me and my sisters riding our bikes. We saw my fourth birthday party with the bouncy castle and the homemade Beetlejuice birthday cake.
I sipped from my beer and looked away from the TV, caught sight of the others, smiling wistfully at what was once us, only twenty-five years previous. It didn’t seem so long ago in that moment. It seemed like maybe we weren’t real, maybe we were our younger selves, imagining this moment.
Would younger-us be happy with older-us?
I think so. Mostly. We’ve lost some friends and family along the way. We’ve fought and made up. We’ve split and moved apart. Some of us have had kids of our own, continuing the cycle. The usual ups and downs of any family unit.
But man does it make you take stock of it all.
Twenty-five years is nothing. One is even less.
What happened to my plans to live in America? To have a rock-solid set of abs? To climb Kilimanjaro? To make a million pounds so I could buy all the Mutant Ninja Turtle and Star Wars action figures?
These things we want to do, these goals, are like water in our cupped hands. We do our best to hold onto them but they slip through our fingers no matter how hard we try to hold on.
And I’ll be honest, there’s a part of me that finds that almost too difficult to take. It’s the reason I cry at the end of Click (yes… the Adam Sandler film). The thought of losing it all without appreciating it fully, making the most of it, hits a nerve.
So here I am… once again at the tail-end of the year, processing in public, trying to hold onto time by writing stuff down, hoping that by doing so, somehow, it’ll slow down, give me chance to take it all in. I don't want to spill a single drop of it.
See here for the previous end of year reviews:
