"You don't have to be old in America to say of a world you lived in: That world is gone"

America moves quickly. Each generation in the United States has watched as familiar customs, landscapes, and ways of thinking disappear, sometimes with breakneck speed. Peggy Noonan’s observation cuts through the presumption that nostalgia or the feeling of witnessing the end of an era belongs solely to the elderly. In today’s America, rapid technological advancements, shifting cultural norms, and unprecedented social upheaval make it possible, even likely, that individuals in their 20s or 30s might find themselves recognizing that many elements of the world they knew, even in their short lifespans, have vanished.

Few societies change as swiftly as America. Industrial and technological revolutions constantly redefine what is possible and necessary. The internet and smartphones remade the landscape of work, communication, and socialization within a single decade. Neighborhoods gentrify seemingly overnight, jobs become automated, entire industries disappear or become unrecognizable, and social values are debated and redefined. The velocity of change is a defining mark of contemporary American identity. This accelerates the sense of dislocation: people are able to look back only five or ten years and genuinely feel as though they inhabited a different reality.

This recognition can breed both loss and possibility. There’s an inevitable mourning for vanished worlds: shuttered local shops, beloved diners, a sense of neighborly familiarity, or public discourse that felt less fraught. Yet Noonan’s line also acknowledges the American tradition of reinvention, the bittersweet blend of nostalgia and adaptation. The past is always vanishing somewhere in America, presenting a challenge and invitation to bear witness, remember, and decide what is worth reclaiming or letting go. Young and old alike understand the impermanence of their realities, and in understanding this, they share in the perennial task of making meaning from constant change.