“Getting old” can be a pretty relative term. While most of us would agree that pensioners are “old,” you can also be hit by a wave of “oldness” when you first realize that you aren’t quite as up-to-date with popular culture. Or perhaps you overhear the younger generation (whose existence is already a sign) refer to the films you watch or music you listen to as “retro.”

Despite our best efforts, there is no escape from getting older. Of all the processes on this planet, the passage of time is the one we can’t even start to influence. Realistically, people need to make peace with the fact that every second they fight aging, they age regardless. Instead, images like the ones in this post serve to remind and perhaps educate beyond anything else. 

In much of the world, aging is actually celebrated. In Korea, when one turns 60, they will have a special party called a hwangap. Part of this celebration’s history comes from the fact that many people in the pre-modern era did not even reach the age of 60. As a result, Koreans have also started to celebrate “Gohi” or “Chilsun” when they turn 70 and “Palsun” when they reach the venerable age of 80. 

One reason to make your peace with aging is that it can actually help you live longer. A positive self-perception of health in old age appears to be directly correlated with longer lifespans. So if living as long as possible is really important, then it’s almost as vital to believe it will happen. Worrying just wastes time for little-to-no gain. 

Memory plays just as important a part. We tend to have a lot of what scientists call “flashbulb” memories, itself a reference to older cameras that would provide lighting with a bright flash from a lightbulb. These are instances, moments, and events that feel “burned” into our memories. Traumatic or important events are often featured, particularly if it was something shared with many people. Witnesses of 9/11 would be an example of “flashbulb” memories. 

We do tend to remember our firsts, as they set the standards and expectations for most events. First kisses, first days of school, and first day on a job all feature here, even though subsequent ones will often be forgotten very quickly. Try to imagine a specific day in fourth grade in November and most of us will draw a blank, even though in the abstract we have an idea of what could have happened and what the classroom may have looked like. 

That being said, memories do degrade with the passing of time. Most “unimportant” memories disappear after the first couple of days unless there is a reminder or we convince ourselves to keep track of something. So if many of the things seen here are the first time you’ve thought of them in years, that’s a normal function of how our memory works. This “whiplash” of seeing something the brain has purposefully forgotten is also why these images might make someone feel “old.”

Of course, a lack of attention also plays a part. If you stop to carefully look around you, there are a lot of dates. Colors, shapes, textures. Remember, every place you have ever gone has an abundance of information that, thankfully, our brain filters out. It’s enough to know in the abstract that most walls have some sort of coat of paint without systematically categorizing every wall you have ever seen. It could be a cool party trick, but realistically you would just get overwhelmed. 

Plus, as you age you take in a lot of new memories and information. Like building on top of a ruin, new memories “push back” older ones and make them harder to retain. The deeper these ideas are buried, the “older” one feels when they are rediscovered through the images here, or visiting a once-familiar place after a long time. 

What also causes these feelings of “being old” is the fact that, despite what we often think, our memories are not actually recordings. We can misremember all sorts of details, falsify memories, and remove or add things that never actually happened. This only becomes apparent when we encounter images such as these that serve as a reminder that a lot of things we think we remember don’t actually look the way they did.