Aging & Wisdom Quote by Rick Mercer

"It’s a brave new world" lands as a comedian’s shorthand for social whiplash: Mercer is registering how fast the cultural weather has changed, and how exposed his own timeline feels inside it. The line isn’t triumphalist; it’s wry astonishment with a bruise under it. By immediately adding, "I'm 42 years old", he yokes the broad, almost bumper-sticker optimism of progress to something stubbornly personal: a body that lived through a different Canada, with different risks.

"I certainly wasn't out in high school" is the real payload. The adverb "certainly" isn’t just emphasis; it’s a protective laugh. It suggests an obviousness that wasn’t obvious at the time, a way to speak about fear without narrating it. Mercer’s intent reads as twofold: to mark progress (the world is "braver" now), and to quietly indict the past without turning the moment into a lecture. That’s classic Mercer: conversational, self-deprecating, but pointed.

The subtext is generational math. If he’s 42, high school sits in the 1980s: an era when being out could mean social exile, family rupture, or worse. By framing it as his own lived constraint rather than abstract oppression, he makes the politics legible through biography. The context also matters: Mercer’s public persona is "national narrator" - the guy who turns civic life into jokes. Here, the joke is the hinge that lets an audience feel both pride and regret at once. Progress exists, but it came late for someone you already trust.