What It’s Like To Be Every Age, According To Fictional Characters

I made this bonkers existential timeline inspired by a flower clock.

Photo by Alexey Savchenko on Unsplash

Through one rabbit hole or other, I recently discovered Carl Linnaeus’ notion of the horologium florae, or flower clock, which was based around the idea that different species of flowers opened at different times of day — sometimes at very precise times — and theoretically you could create a functional clock through an intricate spree of strategic plantings. Apparently, they are possible to achieve, but whether they are or not, I fell in love with the kookie ambition to do it at all. And it gave me my own frivolous but delightful idea…

Whenever we face a minor disappointment, my partner and I often jokingly quote Livia, Tony’s nihilistic mother in “The Sopranos” and say to each other with mock exasperation, “It’s all a big nothing!” I started thinking about other existential musings from favorite characters in TV and movies (most at least a little more upbeat than poor Livia!), and then came the idea of laying out the musings by age, as a kind of existential flower clock. I tend to be a gatherer of things people say in my work, and my book about strangers — No One You Know—is often a log of unexpected but insightful quips.

I’ve found that it’s energizing to give yourself a weird assignment and just see what happens. It’s also interesting to me why certain specifics are chosen for characters in fiction, and age is a specificity that can loom large in a story. The timeline below spans from Age 6 (Matilda) to Age ~2000 (Gandalf). Because I’m the curator, naturally the choices are inflected by my own experience, though I aimed to lean toward a more universal feel. Since I’ve only lived up to Celine’s age in “Before Sunset,” it was a little trickier curating after that, though it is true that I have met other people who are not my age! Sometimes, the musings more specifically embody what it might feel like at a certain age, while other times, it’s simply a broader statement on living.

There’s a note about my age research, assumptions, and calculations at the bottom, but otherwise, to the batmobile! Let us now see what can be gleaned from the cultural hive mind as we all scamper up our own broken, whirring, wild clocks of…