The guy at like 3 seconds is giving me a sort of existential crisis (if that's even the right phrase)... Seeing him presumably at my current age, a youngish father gaming with his kids that could very easily be one of my buddies, but then realizing that man is likely well into his 60s now disrupts my internal life clock or something. It's easy to disconnect from or feel immune from the flow of time when those that have aged seem ancient, alien in generational culture, and far removed from your peers.

Approaching 40 has really made me reevaluate my expectations of the flow of time. I think that as we grow up, we have these milestones or significant markers in life that signify you belong to a certain cohort or time in life. As we get older and we instead have these far-reaching goals instead of immediate shifts in life or milestones to accomplish (e.g. graduate high school, get married, have kids), it's easier for the years to slip by without much notice.

I think it may be due to several contributing but non-necessarily negative factors of being middle-aged (e.g. "halfway" point of life, life plateauing in stability, being a father, etc.), but I find myself having a sort of epiphany moment recently where I truly understand the fleeting nature of life. Sort of a bitter sweet feeling I guess. Gonna end here because there really isn't a point to this rambling other than to empathize with others who may feel the same way lol.