Whats age again? When you say stuff i think things...

Part I.

A few week ago a young woman came into my store she was dressed somewhat plain, like you would expect a librarian to be. She had a somewhat lost and confused look on her face. I offered assistance and found that she was shopping for her 12 year old nephew. Simple circumstances i can remember the general mentality of a 12 year old skateboarder easy quick sale for the woman and for myself.

This isn't out of the ordinary by any means but what sets this apart from other similar exchanges that i have had with people is that the young woman proclaimed that "I am so out of place in here and feel like I have lost touch." Still not that strange I do have many grandparents that come in under the exact circumstances with the same feelings. After the young woman said what she had said I asked her what he age was? She replied 30. I assured her that she was not out of place or possibly out of touch since I was 26 going on 27. We chuckled and she went on her way.

This situation however stuck with me: What is losing touch? How does one lose touch? Why does it happen? Can it be avoided?

The simple answer to the first question is the we simply grow up. We abandon our connection to youthful trends, interests and ideologies for those of the "grown-up" world. I think that most people would agree with me that this could be agreed upon as a suitable definition. Without getting too complicated we will use this definition, we could after all argue the idea of the "grown-up" world.

The blatantly obvious answer to question two is we get older. This shit happens to the best of us. I'm 27 don't know how the hell i got there but i did. Simple add age + "grown-up" world = lost touch.

Question three is where the fun starts. Why do we lose touch? We abandon connection and we age. Not so fast bucko we are not simple as that. These two are connected but we must deconstruct the reasons behind abandoning connection because age just happens and is pretty much an arbitrary number.

Deconstruction fun comes now: So say that in our adolescence we like punk rock and we spend hours listening to all the punk rock that we can get our hands on, we adopt political and social views that are in line with our favorite bands. we dress punk and so on. Essentially we define ourselves from within the definition of what punk is: we are punk. Then one day we grow up and abandon all of this for the life of a doctor or a financial analyst and we lose touch. This happens every day: go to a used record store on the right day and you can see this happen in front of your eyes.

Now that "former punk" current "financial analyst" has a conversation with his nephew about how his nephew really enjoys the new bad religion but the "financial analyst" can no longer relate to the band and feels that they have in fact lost touch. The "financial analyst" no longer has a connection to punk and it seems alien to him even though at one time he was almost explicitly defined by the idea of punk. So how can we lose touch with something that we used to define ourselves by?

The problem with this situation is that the "financial analyst" has a definition problem. Maybe he was just a "financial analyst" all along and never actually touched his "former punk" self. Did he actually have a connection to punk in the first place? Since: You can't lose touch with what you never touched in the first place.

Connections explored in the next part.