A frustrating issue came up when I was using Adobe Reader to e-sign a government PDF document on my MacBook, and I had to get the ThinkPad T430S I used from 2011 to 2014. It’s an interesting experience.
It sometimes happens to people that an old song coming up from nowhere suddenly brings back the life he/she had a long time ago. “Wow! I used to keep listening to this song all day long! But now I don’t even remember it until it suddenly pops up!” The emotions and feelings he/she used to have suddenly flood through him/her, make him/her wonder “why was I feeling so different 5 years ago? What’s been changed?!” Everything.
An old computer does exactly the same thing, but only in a more vivid way. It feels like an adventure in an unknown space, but the moment you ran into something, it becomes so familiar that you remembers every single detail about it, and makes you wonder “how on earth did I forget this completely?”
Scanning through the directories, I remembered the things I was working on during those years, the concerns and desires I had, the people I was thinking of and caring for. “That movie is fun! I should watch it again sometime.” “Oh a lot of materials for my thesis! Seems I did a lot than I remembered…” “Sigh, that thing never happened no matter how carefully I planned.” At one moment, I felt I time-traveled to 5 years ago, sitting in front of the same computer. It’s like a different life.
Everything was so familiar, but at the same time so distant. I recalled the time and effort I spent carefully organizing all those things on this computer, but none of them matters anymore.
This is life. Everyone just marches on.