What You Need to Know to Make it Through this Time

The End of an Era

My son called me last week to tell me about Matthew Perry. He was shook, because “Friends” is what he and his girlfriend watch as comfort viewing, the way some people used to rewatch “The Office”.

One comment stood out in the coverage.

The commenter said that the reason it hit them so hard was that it was “the end of an era.”

I agree with that, but not just in this situation.

Haven’t you felt it? Something has been shifting for quite a while, and it’s big, and it’s been almost unbearable.

Time itself has been weird.

Even Big Ben was out of commission for five years. I was in London in 2022, standing on a crowded street corner, phone recording, waiting for it to strike, and it never did. Embarrassing. It would not start chiming again for six more months.

The clock where I work at a historical site is out of commission as well. It’s quite the metaphor — something is trying to get us all out of whack, to get us behind and to never catch up.

To keep us from hatching, as it were.