Thoughts on time, age

I live right above my old elementary school. Our house is on the hill directly above it, so I can go out onto my deck and look out over the school, 33rd south, the valley, downtown, it's a great view. Makes for some stunning sunsets.
While taking a break outside to sit and think for a little, I looked down on the school. It was recess, and all the little kids were out running around and screaming, playing on the swings and various plastic playthings strung out on the grounds.
What a bunch of wusses these school administrators have become. When I was a second or third grader we had this big, nasty, splintery tower of wood and old tires that I'd play on a lot. It went about fifteen or twenty feet in the air, and the only thing to save your fall were wood chips. Gravel if you landed on the wrong side, and maybe asphalt if you jumped too far out. They tore it down one year, and now everything is metal and plastic, covered in greens and purples and yellows, with this black squishy stuff on the ground to cushion falls.

A bunch of different feelings flashed through my head when I was looking down on them as they played, but the one thought that passed through my mind was this-

"Poor bastards."

Now why did I think that?
I can be quite a cynic sometimes. Not so much nowadays, but maybe the thought was just a random misfire: the poisoned remnants from when I was a little darker. These little guys don't even know they're growing up on a melting planet; living in a floundering country; disenfranchising billions by living a lifestyle they are unaware of and have no control over. Maybe I'm mourning their future, all of the things you and I have done to it.

Perhaps it was jealousy? Of youth, lack of responsibility, or all of that romantic bullshit we assign to little kids? Although I don't think it's that either. By any reasonable measure my childhood was great, but that doesn't wash away the resentment of a few things I don't care to mention. No, if given the option, I wouldn't go back.

I don't believe that life is a curve. It doesn't reach an apex and then dwindle as you get older. My life has only gotten better as I've gotten older. Maybe I'm setting myself up for a seriously rude awakening in thirty years or so, but I think the secret is finding a way to deal with the changes and accept them, to acknowledge that you lose a lot with age but gain just as much.
Maybe I'm just stupid.