The millennial uncle who got left behind

Have you ever felt that the world has left you behind with little to no warning? There were signs, sure, but you did not take them seriously until the younglings started speaking a completely different language one fine evening. The staycation in your own room over the weekend was more enticing.

As all the 90s kids are now veteran players in the game of midlife crisis, some have just started to figure out that the outside world is thriving without their attendance. Take me, for example. My career started with me being the youngest person on the team. No matter how many jobs I switched, jumped to or abandoned, the title somehow followed me.

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Until it didn’t.

One day, someone at work called me “bhaiya” with the kind of respect usually reserved for people who know how provident funds work. Then another colleague was born after the first Harry Potter film came out. I laughed, checked the year, did the maths twice and quietly checked out how provident funds work.

The real kicker came when a young colleague professed her dismay over the movie called The Godfather. “People who like that movie are a walking red flag," she said. Confused and intrigued, I asked why, and she elaborated, "I did not watch it personally, but my friends did, and I believe them.”

Maybe her friends had valid-ish reasons, but I failed to understand the blind trust in an opinion made on a subjective art form. Like many things, critical thinking may have aged like milk.

Then came my friend’s younger brother, who was telling me about someone he liked. I asked whether they were dating. “No, we’re in a situationship.”

I asked him to explain. He tried. There were talking stages, soft launches, delulu behaviour, red flags, green flags and something being “mid.” By the end of it, I understood that the youngsters rebranded the term, “it's complicated.”

That’s the unsettling part. You do not notice yourself becoming older. You are still the same person inside your head, still carrying the same unfinished plans, stupid jokes and mild fear of calling strangers on the phone. But one day you look back, and everything got “updated.”

New words appear. New jobs exist. People build careers by doing things that would have earned us a lecture ten years ago. Everyone seems faster, louder and surprisingly comfortable filming themselves in public.

Meanwhile, I sometimes feel like I am watching it all through glass. Present, but not fully there. I scroll through trends, news, weddings, promotions and tragedies until they begin to feel equally distant and overwhelming. It is not exactly sadness. More like your brain has stepped outside for tea without informing you.

Perhaps that is what being left behind really feels like. Not failure, but disconnection. The world did not reject you. You just stopped showing up for a while.

I’m trying to show up again. Slowly.

I ask my nephew what his words mean, even when he rolls his eyes. I listen to younger colleagues without immediately assuming everything was better in our time. Some things were. Many things were not.

And when I don’t understand something, I resist the ancient uncle instinct to dismiss it as nonsense.

Except “Getting cooked.”

That is just stupid. You cook in a kitchen!