Does anyone else reflect on 'Closer to Cleopatra than...' moments in their personal lives?

[Thurien]

We are told we are closer in time to Cleopatra today than when the first pyramids were built. Then there is Tyrannosaurus Rex which we are closer to than Stegosaurus.

Interesting enough, but what blows my mind more is time distances in my own life. Today I took a detour through the village where I was born and where I returned to live with my young family. There, one of the DC's and I sat on a small hill by the wood's edge and watched young squirrels playing. DC was about 3 and shreiking with joy as they gambled about.

As I drove through today, I reflected that my own early years seemed like a whole eternity before DC came along. It was really like a different life. Yet from the squirrels to now seems like just a decade or two, but still very much connected to now.

Anyone else get these type of thoughts?

Oh god yes. all the time!

The biggest one for me is that I started university 20 years ago next year. To someone starting university this september, i’m equivalent to what someone who started university in 1985 was to me 😱that’s a year before i was born, i must seem ANCIENT to an 18 year old.

The decade between 18 and 28 seemed like a lifetime; then I had my son and suddenly I’m nearly 38 and it feels like it’s passed in about a year

Yes! All the time with various things.

The worst is projecting forward. I'll think about something that seems like yesterday and remember it's thirty years ago. Then imagine thirty years time and reflecting back again... and realising I'll probably be dead.

I dont get the cleopatra thing??

In the early-mid 1980s - 40 years ago, (when I was in my late teens/early 20s,) I enjoyed the music then (that still sounds current and really good now.)

At that time, music of the same age would have been out during the second world war!

Mind blown!

Yes, particularly with pop culture and music stuff. I think anything early 00s is relatively new. It blows my mind that early 00s to now is the same gap as mid 70s to mid 90s. I remember mid 90s so well and things from the 70s seemed so old and dated. I also can't believe that at 47 I'm as near to being 60 as I am to 34. My brain literally can't process how long the dinosaurs existed and the fact that they no longer do. Sometimes I wonder do I believe in them at all!!

The time gap between now and Cleopatra is shorter than the gap between the pyramids and Cleopatra. We just think of that time as "The Egyptian era" but it was a really really long time.

It really hit me this summer, when the 80th anniversary of D Day was in the news, because I visited the D Day beaches during a primary school trip when the 40th anniversary commemorations were happening. Which means that me being at primary school is as close to WWII as it is to now!!!

ALSO, it blows my mind that MAMMOTHS were around when the pyramids were being built. Just 3500 years ago. Flipping mammoths!!! I associate them with the dinosaurs/prehistoric times!

A lot of people find it mind blowing that the pyramids were built 2,500 before Cleopatra was born...but she was born in 30 bc meaning she existed closer to our present time than that of those building the pyramids. I suppose there's ancient history...then there's ancient history!

Yes, all the time. I went to university in the 80s, nearly 40 years ago. So to new undergraduates going this year I'm like the old timers in my alumni magazine who went in the 1940s!

I had a conversation with my dd yesterday - we were talking about where we live and it turned out that I moved into this house when I was 24, and dd was 24 when she moved out of it.

Where has all that time gone?

Yeah all of that! Weird!

And as for this.................

I also can't believe that at 47 I'm as near to being 60 as I am to 34.

OMG!

Yes.

Mostly I reflect on how the 70s seemed an age away to the 90s when I was a teenager and any music I listened to from the 70s seemed to be very ancient and exotic for it. But I was closer to the 70s then, than young people are today to the 90s!

I also think about ww2 and how it ended 35 years before I was born. I was closer to the war then that I am now to my own childhood!

🤣 I started university in 1981! Which feels like 20 years ago but apparently is 43 years 🤔. So for me, the equivalent period predating my first day would have been in 1938!!! Before ww2 had even started !!!🤯

I know what you mean, OP. Time seems to have disappeared for me over the past ten or more years. I find it hard to believe that the 90s, when I was a teenager, was 30 years ago, and have realised that me listening to 90s music is the equivalent of my mum listening to 60s music when I was a teenager.

In a similar way, the fact that Pick of the Pops on Radio 2 is up to the 80s/ 90s when it used to play old music (50s/60s) when I was young 🙈

I was a bit shocked when someone pointed out that the film Top Gun came out in 1986 (which was 41 years after WW2 ended), and it’s now almost 40 years since Top Gun was released.

The fact that mammoths were still around when the pyramids were built always surprises me.

I read somewhere that T Rex was closer to iPads than stegosaurus.

Wow!!

My birth was much closer to the start of WWI than I am to my birth, in terms of years. Different world entirely.

99% of human history was in the Stone Age.
For the first 30 years of my life, 100 years ago was Victorian times. Now the 20s are 100 years ago.
I'm 53 and one of my grandfathers was born in the 19th century. 7 years before Queen Victoria died.

EllieQ
I was a bit shocked when someone pointed out that the film Top Gun came out in 1986 (which was 41 years after WW2 ended), and it’s now almost 40 years since Top Gun was released“

Yet there’s Tom leaping about in Paris!

The 10 richest people of all time (in real terms) were Normans (from Normandy, not their names 🤣)

I had a shock this morning when they were discussing the LA Olympics on R4 and I realised I'd be nearly sixty.

I was working with a youngster last week, she was 19, i said i could be your mum, she said my mum is 38, my gran is 55....I'm older than her gran 😆🤦‍♀️