One Day, Baby

Julia Engelmann recited something at a slam in Bielefeld that hit harder than expected. She studies psychology, which maybe explains the precision—the way she could name what everyone in the room was already thinking but hadn’t quite said out loud.

The piece is about aging. One day, baby, we’ll be old, she says into the microphone, and we’ll think about all the stories we could have told. It’s not a new observation. You’ve probably thought it at 3 AM, or lying in bed on a Sunday morning, or standing at your desk on a Wednesday knowing you’ve wasted another day. But the way she delivered it made it feel true in a different way—made you feel caught, in that uncomfortable moment where someone’s articulated something about you that you can’t quite dismiss.

What happens next is the real thing though. That moment of recognition, that flash of shame or clarity or whatever you want to call it—it doesn’t last. You feel it while you’re listening, and then you walk out and life continues exactly as it was. You don’t start doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing. You just sit with the feeling for a while, and then it dissolves back into the regular noise of living.

I’m not sure what I expected would be different.