I was floored to discover four out of every five people in the world are younger than me

The AI Blog Post Image Generator has been doing so well lately, but when I prompted it with "How did I get to be so old?" it returned this. I can't tell whether it's spot on for today's post or simply horrifying.

Not long ago, I stumbled across a fun little app housed on the website of France's Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques, which as you might imagine translates to the "National Institute of Demographic Studies."

My use of the word "fun" in connection with an organization that studies population trends may feel like a stretch. But I'm telling you, this small section of their site is interesting. They call it "The World Population and Me," and you can access it by clicking anywhere in this sentence.

(Don't worry, it's in English.)

The first thing it asks you to do is enter your age, which in my case is 54. This immediately generated a fascinating comparison between the world population when I was born in 1969 (about 3.7 billion) and what it is today (around 8.1 billion).

That's a huge increase in a relatively short amount of time, but that wasn't what really grabbed me.

What knocked me for a loop was when I clicked on "My Place in the Population."

Doing this revealed that, as of this moment, 79% of the people in the world are younger than me, while 21% are older.

I don't know what I thought those percentages were going to be, but...I'm older than nearly 80% of current humans? What??

I had to sit down for a moment.

The ratio somewhat improved when I limited it to just the United States. A full 32% of the population here is older than me, presumably thanks to longer American life expectancies vs. some other parts of the world.

Still, it does give you perspective. Maybe "too much perspective," as the boys in Spinal Tap might say.

Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I plan to be around for a long, long time. I don't know if that's what God is planning, but that's my expectation.

It's just that sometimes the math redefines the parameters of "a long, long time," at which point I have to sit down again.

And maybe watch an episode or two of Matlock.