The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Past-life experience: If you could pick any time to live in, when would it be?

Perspective by
Columnist
February 6, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. EST
Reporters sit around the newsroom playing cards, reading the paper and talking on the phone. (Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis/Getty Images )

Brian Wilson said it best: “I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.”

I think about that Beach Boys song from, um, time to time. Nobody really knows what it’s like to live in any other time but their own, of course. For me, that’s the time from 1962 to today. (And, honestly, those first few years are pretty blurry.)