Michael Apted's “Seven Up” series is reaching its conclusion

I first discovered this series a few weeks ago. I found the idea fascinating and I expected to be keen to dig into it. So I read some of the pieces that I found online and I stopped. My expectation of wanting to dive into this living soap opera turned into a feeling of bleak depression. Part of it has something to do with the blandness of even the happiest of near-endings, and part of it has something to do with the sadness of seeing a seven year old quickly progress in age to that point in life when we're sort of forced to evaluate who and where we are. It was far too quick of a journey for me. Their lives are presented like a history book, that places an emphasis on wars and other human struggles. It's also similar to a newscast: the bad news overwhelms and the good news is boring, so it doesn't get much attention. It's a CV that demands to know "what have you done with your life?" in a series of bullet points that skews toward points of merit.

I suppose that part of my feeling has to do with the fact that I'm at that point in life myself. Family and peers are getting sick and dying. I'll be doing the same. A lot of us aren't mentally prepared for what it's really like to be here. I think I've been working my way through it pretty well, but it takes a lot of emotional and philosophical work that we may not have a lot of experience with.

For me, Seven Up pokes and prods at life's battle wounds without enough attention to the boring bits that may actually dominate a life, which might be where our focus needs to be if we're to attain the contentment that should perhaps be our goal, whatever our class.

The biggest takeaway for me was that, while you can't necessarily 'see the man' in a seven year old, you can most certainly see the seven year olds in the adults. Everyone's just trying to get along; but we're all still just kids inside, a little scared and a little uncertain about how to deal with the world at large.

That’s a very keen observation. Not quite as strong a claim, but it fits better with the minority of participants whose lives seemed to take an unexpected direction.

Growing up as a successive winnowing of possibilities; a lot of the winnowing complete as early as age 7, but by no means all.