And it never ends! When I was 25, I cringed at how I was when I was a teenager, but I was glad that at least I wasn't like that anymore. Now that I'm in my 30s, I cringe at how I was when I was 25!
For me it is more like, when you interact with young adults - you will able to see the difference between developing and actually developmed brain.
Tho not everyone reaches that point.
And yes. We all been that stupid.
But it’s very different when you’re a typical healthy adult and someone reminds you: you’re almost at an age where it’s normal to poop your pants. Talk about cringe
Like a shart, you have to roll the dice a lot, but usually win. Eventually, your card gets pulled.
So when it happens to me, I plan on laughing about it and dealing with it. And until then, working on continually improving and balancing my diet, and anal health and happiness.
I have a principle of not judging my younger self for not knowing better. Hindsight isn't helpful.
Anyway, there are lots of people who don't learn from their experiences, so they're fools when they're in their 70s just like they were fools in their 20s. The only difference is that they had 50 years of opportunities to learn, but because they were fools, they didn't. That makes old fools even worse than young ones.
That's the worst part!? Not having to mourn friends and family while being stuck in this ever-worsening world? Or hoping you have enough retirement saved up and invested in the right, safe things since you become less and less capable every day (to say nothing of being less employable). You have to watch as your body gradually fails and your agency is taken away; you also gradually lose more and more of your senses and personality and less and less people who know and care about you are around, you lose your memories and eventually your own sanity and are left trapped in your own mind, not knowing who you are or what's happening...
But yeah, I do have that one cringe moment as a teenager.
I'll tell you the worst thing. Far worse than anyone else here can mention.
Time is constantly accelerating. When you are 5, the concept of a year is nearly an eternity. But your perception of time changes the older you get. Every year is shorter and shorter. Like you are on a constantly accelerating ship headed to the end of existence.
Humans adapt. We have abysmal bandwidth, so we have adapted. If anything is normal you don’t notice. You reserve bandwidth for the unexpected. You already know how to react and what to do/feel regarding daily life.
Absolutely, you stop measuring the passage of time in days and years and start measuring it in experiences. When you're young and everything is new it's absolutely full. The 10th or hundredth time you've done something you handle it more easily but it also starts to seem like one 'thing'.
Routine is the quickest way to looking back on life and feeling like it was the blink of an eye.
I feel this way precisely because I keep doing new and novel things: there are so much to learn, think, and try out, I feel I am constantly in a rush.
When I was younger, I either have well-defined tasks or I would hit technical blocks forcing me to stop for a long time. Now, I get to work on all the hard problems to my heart's desire, and is also more skilled, thus hits way less blocks. I am in a constant race against my own ideas and desires to try new things...
It is cool and fulfilling, but also terribly exhausting most of the time :(
I don't think that's true. Time is relative so it's only accelerating if you're in a comfy routine with fewer distinct points of reference. There's an easy fix for that.
From my perspective, I believe it is true. I'm only late 30s, and I've been filling my time with more "firsts" than ever before, but I can't remember the last time I ever thought "damn, time is really dragging on today".
I've got a relatively new career; I've been trying my hand at politics (was just 150 votes from winning an election this year!); I've been getting involved with volunteer work; I've gotten involved in activism, going to protests, anti-racism rallies, removing stickers, posters and flags placed to cause division and hate; I've been bonding with the most beautiful parrot my fiancée and I rescued; I'm teaching my son to drive; - the list goes on. My schedule is pretty relaxed, but whenever I look at the time of day I think "hell, how did that all go so quick?".
I've been making a few mistakes just this week because my brain has refused to update the fact that we're 5 days into July already and we're no longer in mid June.
I dunno. Maybe it's time perception, maybe I have early onset Alzheimer's, or maybe I have early onset Alzheimer's.
I've hit a point where I can do a lot of the things I passed on previously because I was always busy or didn't feel like I had the money. It doesn't slow anything down. I can't actually remember all the things I've done. I don't regret doing all these things because I get reminded about them over time, but it's still just a fuller life, not a slower life. Things I "recently" put on hold have been waiting for years. Projects that were deemed critical at the time have gone unfinished, mostly proving nothing was critical.
And that's not to say to have a full life, you have you be bouncing off the walls from airports to other continents to concerts to festivals to soup walks to ski resorts to motorcycle rides to beaches to parties to home improvement projects to artistic endeavors. That's just my flavor, slotting things into the schedule as they fit.
This is true. I barely notice summers anymore. They used to stretch out and now feel compressed into 6 week stretch when other people aren't available.
One of my kids freaked out the other day when he realized it was July and we still hadnt gone to the pool! My wife and I had barely noticed, our weekends have been busy, but the summer is already 1/3 gone!
We're always moving through time capped at C minus velocity through space, so the only way that could accelerate is if we're slowing down moving through space?
Which is why it's a good skill to learn to be comfortable being alone. Had to learn this the hard way my first year of living on campus and not really gelling socially with my dormmates.
Being neurodivergent and coming from high school where most of my friendships were formed from convenience made forming new friendships complicated in college.
You start to realize there's only a finite amount of time left and start having to choose what you're going to start based on what you'll be able to finish and what you could have spent your finite time on instead of.
Also loved ones and close friends passing away is hard, but the state before that... getting ill and their health going downhill... no longer able to be the person you grew up with. It's mentally rough.
Finally, your body no longer being able to cash the check your mind wants to write.
the state before that... getting ill and their health going downhill... no longer able to be the person you grew up with. It's mentally rough.
Having to be the primary caretaker for my dad before he passed while trying and failing to reconcile with the emotional abuse and detachment from my childhood still fucks me up to this day.
I hear you…I live in a different part of the state than my parents now, but when I see my dad, who used to be a big strong guy (and a bit of an asshole), wither into a ghost of his former self is hard to process for the reason you mentioned. He was emotionally and a little physically abusive, so I battle empathy and bitterness in my head.
One of the things I'd say to your first paragraph is that you're never too old to learn something new. I'm a driving instructor and I've had learners who are over 60. Though, sadly I have seen first hand what you're talking about. One lady I taught a few years ago at 62 years old had to stop taking lessons because her hip was going... Our last lesson was the last time I saw her 😭
The body is like a machine, and the older you get: parts suddenly break down and can’t be fixed anymore. Some parts got damaged when you were young (meniscus, teeth, hearing) and they then start causing problems when you’re old. It’s practically impossible to loose weight after 50. Your libido goes down the drain.
I'd say depending on the person, losing weight becomes hard in your 30s if you don't keep up with it.
Hi, it's me, I'm the one who hasn't really kept up with it aside from changing my diet. Nothing drastic, just cutting down on what I eat, in no small part thanks to the economy.
Also, all my weight caught up to me in that I have high blood pressure and mild sleep apnea, both of which can be controlled if not eliminated outright if I just exercised more.
The average American lifestyle kind of discourages exercise and eating well. It's also very stressful. I certainly can't fault people for not doing it. I imagine those conditions exist a lot of other places too. I also started gaining a bit more weight in my mid to late thirties but I also rediscovered bicycling during that time. I didn't really lose any weight, but the way it was concentrating in my belly slowed down or even reversed a little bit. I'm amazed at how much it balanced my mood. Still working on those glutes of steel though.
I'm a guy, and I imagine you're correct. Hormones change over time and with age. I usually get blood work done when I go in for a physical and have had those conversations. Everything is looking good, I'm just getting older. He did encourage me to keep up the exercise.
Yeah, I have put on as much weight from 50 - 52 as I did from 40 - 50. But I have moved from working hard to hardly working (moved into a management position) so it's hardly surprising I guess
I think about it occasionally: when you're a baby/kid/teen/youngadult, you're eating for energy and for growth. But once you're fully grown, unless you're building a ton of muscle, you don't really need to eat nearly as much.
I think there's a periodical reassessment of neutral caloric gain/loss that should happen, especially once one's metabolism stabilizes. In other words, expressly figure out how how much you need to eat in order to not gain or lose weight, once your lifestyle and energy use is stable.
This is made more difficult because it's actually better for you to eat more and burn it off/use it, than it is to just very little.
Edit: And obviously, this is much easier said than done. But, gotta figure out the goal and take iterative steps to figure it out, right?
Woah there. I agree with part of this but so much is more a "use it or lose it" situation. I'm almost 60, husband a couple years older, we still fuck every day and I get off at least once a day still. I do think it's muted a bit, slightly less intense usually but way more multiples, so it kind of works out.
Did gain weight at menopause that stuck - sort of gamed that by starting out underweight so I'm still not fat, but agree wholeheartedly it doesn't fall right off like it did, part of that I think is my worry that if I lose it my bones will suffer, so I don't want to diet. Still in good shape just smack in the middle of healthy BMI when I was aiming for the bottom of it.
Teeth are STUPID, we should not get the final set so young.
Everything takes so, so long to heal now.
My mom said the worst thing about getting old was that you could not make plans. She planned to come up here to see Tab Benoit with a group of friends but by the day of the show two of them had died.
My wife and I were like that at that age. We've wound down a bit since then, but twice a week is still much better than never.
A tip for the guys: tes levels drop as your percent of body fat increases. Maintain muscle mass and stay lean and you probably won't need the boner pills even when you're old as dirt.
Y'know the bathtub curve? It applies to any complex system. Beyond a certain point, entropy hits multiple subsystems in parallel. You can mitigate it, but the effort to do so increases over time.
I've lost my dad, my brother, and most recently lost a good friend. I'm only 31, so I know what you mean. These have all been extremely painful and difficult to live through, but fuck, I can't imagine losing my life partner.
I'm really sorry for your loss. Life really does take some of us for a ride. Hope you manage to find some peace and happiness eventually.
And your gums. Actually floss. No one wants to but your 60 year old self will thank you.
Wearing braces for the first time at 60, because my teeth decided to start moving around enough to affect eating. And it’s just getting worse from here. I brushed: no cavities ever. I have good health/genes: one root canal is my only tooth issue. But I hated flossing and rarely did, and my dentists pointed out gum health over the decades, so here we are
Like I say at work: I'm here to share my knowledge and experience, not to be an Old Testament prophet. If you choose not to listen, it's on you. And I keep minutes in case anyone asks "why didn't you tell them?"
To watch your body deteriorate more and more, and your brain as well. It makes life harder, little by little, every day.
Old people don't do so many things anymore because they just can't, because it gets too hard.
Not doing things anymore that you have always done, that is one definition of dying (some start it very soon in their life). In the end you don't do anything anymore.
Unforeseeable circumstances like injury or illness aside, much of the bodily degredation people succumb to is voluntary. Our bodies are very much "use it or lose it" and if you're sedentary and disregard the importance of diet, you'll have a bad time.
Things like arthritis and other autoimmune diseases are life changing, probably more common than you think, and probably affecting younger people than you think.
In the context of the message you were replying to you were definitely downplaying the proportion of people's physical problems that are not in their control. The fact you did a slippery slimy acknowledgment that uncontrollable problems exist at all doesn't absolve you of that.
I'm already seeing this and regretting this in my 40s... relatively young, but a lot of little problems that my peers brush away as being inevitable, i know i could likely have avoided if i was more active in my youth.
And all thesr little issues pile up over years until people throw up their hands and say "its just getting old, nothing i can do!!"
Its all about probability. Nothing in guaranteed. But i could probably avoid a lot of issues if i was more aware and active in my youth...
I'm super active now, and i aspire to be like an 82 year old man i met who walks 20km every day
Someone on Lemmy told me your body will hurt all the time in your 30's. On the subject, old people IRL were all like WTF, no. I'm guessing the cohort here is pretty sedentary.
Very little is really in our control, after all, despite what the medical world loves to shout at us.
Not saying don't work at it (do what you can) aging is a real bitch and causes changes we simply have no way to prevent - and not just disease, just aging.
I disagree, most of that is very much manageable. You can age very gracefully if you invest into yourself. In fact I do much more in my 40s than I ever did.
I'm still pretty young yet but one thing I've noticed with growing older is how less and less people your age seem to want to have fun. I don't mean acting silly I mean finding time for joy in life and expressing that inner child. And yet they still make mistakes and deal with them like a kid would :/
It really feels like being with children acting like adults, who have forgotten how to be children. Just weird lol.
Yeah, one thing that’s held true throughout the years is that no one really leaves high school in their heads. I’m generalizing and referring to groups rather than individuals.
Yeah, I was always too hung up on being mature, responsible, preparing for the future …. One of the many great things about having kids was rediscovering how to act like a kid!
Sleep is shit. I remember when I was a teen or in my early 20s. I could sleep like a baby for 10 hours straight and wake up like tigger, raring to to, full of vim and vigour. Now I sleep in half hour bites. Each time I wake, I have to change position because some bit or other feels like it's going to sleep (the irony!) or just hurts. At least once in the night I need to pee. My dreams, at this point, inevitably become some variation of me looking for a toilet and they're always dirty or broken or something is wrong with them. I wake feeling tired, even if I get 10 hours in bed.
Chronic arthritis. I'm not that old (late 50s) but my hips are utterly fucked. I can't walk for more than a couple of miles before the pain starts. I can't have steroids because (apparently) my hips might just fall apart. I can't have hip replacement surgery (Fuck! That's something old people have done!) because the arthritis isn't currently sufficiently debilitating.
People no longer notice you. When I was younger I was a good looking guy. I had girlfriends who made everyone's head turn. Women fancied me, men were envious of me. Now, I'm just some old guy. It's pretty fucking rare that anyone gives me a second glance. I'm just some old guy.
I have noticed this as well. I joke with the students that us old guys all look the same so they'll have trouble telling us apart for awhile. But it's true.
Until like 5-10 years ago, I've been traveling a lot, and in the evening, I'd take the tram or go on foot, sometimes 30-60 minutes, and go to bars, restaurants, no problem. In some city that's completely unknown to me. After pretty heavy drinking and with just a few hours of sleep, I'd get up in the morning and travel on.
Nowadays, when checking in after, let's say, a 2 hours journey, all I want to do is watch TV in my suite, end of story.
As to 3.: That can still happen, and it's quite rewarding when it does. Just a few months ago, I've been turning heads again because I started dating a cover model for dentist's office magazines. All eyes were glued to them wherever we went.
Then one day, you're sitting all sobered up in some hotel room with what suddenly appears to be the phoniest person on the planet, and you start to realize beauty isn't all there is.
Seriously, every day there's a new ache or pain. Things that never hurt when I was younger now hurt if I think about them wrong.
Body on Monday: "So we're taking a step today, are we? Not without your ankle suddenly feeling like a knitting needle is being driven through it for the next week".
Body on Tuesday: "Sneezed, huh? Enjoy the feeling of your lower trapezius muscles being ripped from your back!"
Body on Wednesday: "Did you turn your head slightly to glance over that way? Boy, you don't like this neck, do you?!"
Body on Thursday: "Yeah, nothing fancy today. Just flaring up this old back injury, because you turned over in your sleep".
Right on. My school's Capoeira mestre is in his 70's. Healthy as a horse, flexible, freaking ripp'd, and has the wisdom and experience to still take anybody down. Needed his hips replaced recent though.
I can't possibly train that hard. That's what happens when you make a martial art your entire life. But I'm hoping I can at least avoid becoming a shuffling little shrimp-postured man by staying moving and flexible. Lol
Survivor bias probably. There was picture of Ernie Hudson on Lemmy recently who is just crushing it at 80. Given large enough numbers there are some people who will just defy all odds for a while. And they will attribute their longevity to something other than chance. Capoeira, cooking with bacon grease, use/abstinence of alcohol, hard work, protecting leisure time. None of it means anything if you wait long enough.
The heartbreaks, failures, disappointments, and losses you experience in your youth accrue and do permanent damage over time. Also, everything you loved in your youth will be unrecognizably different or gone completely within 20-30 years. (Which is why I recommend people get in the habit of journaling.)
Also, you won't digest food as well as you age and your digestion's going to get weird.
Suddenly, I can’t handle porter beers anymore. All other beers and alcohols have the usual effects, but porters give the worst hangovers even with minimal consumption.
At random, I struggle with milk. Happened consistently for a while, I stopped drinking milk. I started again after a year or so, I was fine again. Nowadays once a year or so milk hits wrong and I can’t digest it, while I can most of the time.
Caffeine hits way more as well. I used to not care, now two coffees/a big coke and I can’t sleep for hours.
Regarding caffeine and alcohol: I feel like combination dehydration and awareness really hits. Like you become more aware of how things affect you, but I've also noticed a TON of people most don't drink fucking water and enough water. Like, holy. Drink more gd water.
Also, you won't digest food as well as you age and your digestion's going to get weird.
Me becoming lactose intolerant in my early to mid twenties hit me like a fucking truck in the worst way possible. I ate an ice cream sandwich one day and was constipated for a week.
I developed a pineapple allergy late in life. Not sure if it was due to COVID or aging but if I eat pineapple now, my tongue gets a bunch of circular sores that last for days.
For sure, "live like it's your last day" is a very different thing, and not good advice. You should take your chance at making a memory when it comes (within reason), but you should also go to work (preferably at a job you can at least tolerate).
There's things that don't fall in either category that you have to ration, though. Slot machines seem like a pretty uncontroversial example. Gaming or streaming can be worthwhile, YMMV, but few would argue every hour done has been worth it. Doomscrolling is a little bit of a self-own to put on Lemmy, but the same for that.
Basically, it seems like old us would want us to use time, not waste it.
In your mid 30s all the pets you and your friends got as your first pets as “adults” die. That first dog for your first place? Dead. That first cat after college? Dead. They all die in the same ~5 years period so you relive your loss through your friends over and over, and dog save you if those happened to be the pets your children were born with… it’s so hard
RIP Evey, Momo, Bonnie, Otie, Maddoc, Buddy Lee, Twinkie, Blue and Pippen, among so many others, we still miss you 💔
It can feel like you're slowly fading out of existence. Almost like you're gradually becoming a ghost. No one cares that much about anything you have to say or anything you do because you're old. I'm lucky because I have a home that's mine and I'm surrounded by family and friends, but I'm starting to realise how hard it must be if you get old without those things. Like becoming invisible alone. Also, it's pretty obvious now that the end is coming at some point. When it does I hope it's quick. I hope I don't see it coming and that I don't end up being a burden on my loved ones.
Because with some exceptions the majority of the biggest decision makers don't get to be decision makers because they are smart, but because they got lucky (usually by having an ancestor that got lucky, today)
My best friend since childhood died last year and that just destroyed me. Lost my mom just a couple months later which made things worse, but not as much as everyone thinking losing my mom was the only major loss I've had in the last year. I hate how much losing my friend seems to just get ignored when talking to even my therapist about all the things that has happened to me over the last year.
First you go to birthday parties, then party parties, then graduation parties, bachelor/bachelorette parties, weddings, your friend's kid's parties then funerals
I'm 60 and gave seen a lot of water under that bridge. A really good friend of mine who is in their early 40s and just got a cancer diagnosis this week. It never gets easier.
It's traumatic for many. People start to realize that they actually age in their 30s and turn to weird shit because they don't know how to deal with trauma of aging.
Rampant discrimination against older people, especially women is crazy and something you don't fully notice until you or your peers are affected directly.
The fastest rise in homeless demographic are women over 50.
GOP are directly putting your mothers and grandmothers on the street effectively murdering them
Rampant discrimination against older people, especially women is crazy and something you don’t fully notice until you or your peers are affected directly.
I hear old people talk about this, but then they run every government and large business, have most of the money, and get like the majority of government services as well.
Yes. Obviously, there's a whole lot of other axes at play here. What "race" and gender they are, how rich and powerful their parents were, if they had a career in computing or slide rule sales...
Just taken as a lump group, and compared to younger lump groups, though, there's no contest.
Sure, maybe. I guess until it's us young people's turn, it'll be hard to know how much is real, and how much is directionless crankyness or early dementia.
And FWIW there's dumber things to build a hierarchy around. The very young understand little.
Vision changes. Can't read my tablet with my glasses on. Can't read the TV with them off.
Becoming a widower really really sucks.
The aches and pains are rough some times. The stupid crap you did that was fun as a kid will find you eventually.
Starting to lose the strength I always had. Used to be able to lift nearly anything i could put my arms around. Carrying a clothes dryer up a set of stairs by myself wasn't bad. Still strong but not like I was.
I do miss wearing contacts, but I don't produce enough tears anymore and don't like sneaking off to put in saline drops throughout the day. So now I just wear glasses.
Yeah I was considering monovision for contacts actually. My late wife did that and she was happy with it. I don't really have a dominant eye so it should allow me to see ok close and far without bifocal lenses.
It's been my peer group, and relatives my age, that have affected me the most.
My parents were both old, were in good shape until very near the ends of their lives, and went fast. But with people who are very old, you can get some of your mourning done in advance. It's not that big of a surprise when they check out.
The family is one thing, and I think most people expect that.
But something about seeing all the actors and singers and whatever people slowly get SUPER old and die, and constantly replaced with new people you dgaf about who are younger than you, just reminds you that the world is slowly becoming not for your parents, then not for you, and then not for people who are younger than you. And then THOSE people get old and you think "Jesus Christ how old am I?"
I'm not looking forward to it, but suppose I should just embrace it.
I wonder if the correct way to do this is to find stuff you actually care about, and stick with it. So that "outside" remains as outside, and "my interests" remain in my vision.
Or maybe there's nothing really to do besides know it's coming and brace my anis?
But something about seeing all the actors and singers and whatever people slowly get SUPER old and die, and constantly replaced with new people you dgaf about who are younger than you,
I was thinking about this the other day. Brad Pitt, Matthew McConaughey, and Val Kilmer are no longer the chosen lead. At least not as much. Now it's timothee chalamet and I don't get it. I haven't watched much of his movies though.
I am still bummed out about David Bowie's passing. Will there be anyone who can fill his shoes?
Losing friends to suicide hurts the soul. And I thought I had more time with my dad and brother. It's weird to keep living after all these events.
I rewatched Equilibrium the other day in many years, and it's WILD how similar Timothy Chalmet is to Christian Bale. Chalamet is fine, but he's just alright. I personally always thought Bale was more charming.
Regarding Bowie, no. I think he had his own thing going, and for the era then, there are and were movie stars and famous musicians. Now, however, things are so much more fragmented, that fanbases and hype are basically forced capitalism. There's more small-scale glimmer, all over the internet and in various places, but the monolithic "Star" that everybody knows, as a concept, is basically over, and the idea will likely die along with the remnants of them who are still alive, and those of us who knew them. Just like with the silent movies of yore, people like Robert De Niro will slip into legend. Or, those things, like the '80s, will have established themselves as near-permanent tropes and concepts, and will be riffed upon and evolved until they fully dissolve, break down, and integrate themselves into normal, everyday real life society. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 and the up-and-coming GTA VI are a sign of this.
But going on that basically nobody these days even knows who Ray Liotta is, may be a sign that both may be happening.
I'm still waiting for a replacement for John "Total Biscuit" Bain.
I've luckily never lost friends to suicide, only other things. I can only imagine how much that would change the world.
I must be younger or luckier than you, because I still have my immediate family, for now. Though, I'd be lying if I didn't often wonder the ultimate question of purpose. I don't look forwards to a lot of these aspects of growing older, but recently have accepted that one day, death is simply saying goodbye to the world and taking the forever sleep. I'll certainly miss it, even the pain and misery, for that, too, is part of being lucky enough to be alive.
A lot has already been said, but one I didn’t see that I truly never expected is that I’m losing my grip strength. I drop things all the time now, and those pickle jars don’t open nearly as easily.
Getting older is great! You've been around long enough to see how some things change while others stay the same. You start to care more about some things and less about the rest. Every year is my favorite age! Except for the year i lost my mom- that was worst thing about aging.
No purpose, no goal. My entire life has been driven by: goto college, meet someone, get married, buy a house, have a kid, pay for college, save for retirement. Ok, done?
For sure. It’s mainly psychological, feeling a bit adrift. Trying f to transition from always working toward a long term goal to … not. And obviously you don’t want to just exist and kill time. There’s a whole world of short term experiences and satisfaction just waiting for the right shift in mindset
I had a reckless youth. I literally never thought about being old let alone plan for it. So here I am and I still don't have a vision for it. My wife and I talk about this all the time because we have both moved a lot during our careers and don't have a natural home. With compromises we can probably live anywhere.
Missed the college and house, but right there with you.
We definitely must endeavor to find our path in life, besides that of the "citizen unit" that simply contributes to the economy and population then passes the torch.
A lot of comments here with legitimate aspects of getting older, but not many that aren't fairly common knowledge.
I offer the compressed sense of time as you age. Everything just seems to go by faster and faster leaving you wondering where all your time went when things are over.
My personal theory is that this is kinda like an "echo" in Minority Report.
Basically, when you're still fresh, everything is new. Brain is like "Write this down! Interesting!"
But a lot of adult life stops being an adventure. You clock in and out, automatically say "fine thanks, you?" to the thousandth "how's it goin" that year, drive the same route to and from the job, the grocery store, etc...
The brain has seen this before. The experience isn't novel. It tosses it out with the trash. Why hang on to a million copies of "Went_to_Work_did_stupid_job_had_reheated_chicken.mp4" ? You also are getting crappier sleep, so things don't record as readily to long term storage.
Heck, I would clock in, hear the stupid "ding" sound, and legit not be sure if I actually just did that or if my brain was recalling the billion other times I've done it, 30 seconds later.
So anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, the key to a long experienced life might be to keep your brain "guessing" by switching things up, trying things differently, always learning new skills, trying to interact with different kinds of people.
The endless, rote, routine is a certain kind of hell.
Anyway, I'm no neurologist or anything, just another frustrated working class, but I think I'm on the money here lol.
I'm thinking of moving from my higher paying career field to one that will pay me a nearly break even salary (for this living area) because my heart just isn't in this anymore. Talking days of staring at the screen and not doing anything. Feels bad yo.
I’m thinking of moving from my higher paying career field to one that will pay me a nearly break even salary (for this living area) because my heart just isn’t in this anymore.
How close are you to retirement? If you increased savings from [high paying career], how much longer would you have to work at it before you could stop working altogether?
Not close to retirement. Can't save because of family debt that I didn't accrue. If I was solo I would lean fire my way into a nice small house somewhere to chill but that ain't happening.
In my 30's, if my pee was extra yellow I'd think "Wow" and then get on with my life. In my 70's, if my pee is extra yellow I think " My organs are broken! I'm dying!".
That you feel like you woke up in a completely different meat suit, than the one you were used to for 40 odd years. Nothing is the same. Clothes don't fit the same, you can't pull off the same styles you once could, you can't bend or reach the same. Injuries seem to be delivered by someone with a voodoo doll of you and a lifetime of object jealousy. The view from the top of the hill, doesn't look any different than the incline, they lied to you about that. Your brain and who you are feels the same as your late 20yo brain, but with some well learned lessons under its belt, so you kinda watch everything slide around you, it kinda feels like that time lapse of the fruit rotting. And time moves faster. When you're 10, one year is a larger portion of your life than one year is, comparatively against 40 odd years, and it literally feels like that. It gets to a point where a year feels like a month. But your emotions and perspective on the world slows down and zooms out, and now you can see the forest for the trees. You realise you were a little brainwashed into thinking certain things mattered, that really really didn't at all. The flip side of that coin, is knowing what really matters, and appreciating it so much more. You can't achieve that without trying every biscuit on the tray. My you be blessed with the privilege to learn what it feels like to grow old with yourself. Not all of us do.
Being excluded from culture when you feel like the same person you always were. At some point in your life, every TV commercial, every new service, every trending product will be aimed right at you. And then you'll age out of the marketer's target bracket, and suddenly the party is over and you might as well be dead.
It doesn't sound like a big deal because all that stuff is bullshit anyway, except our entire human culture has been replaced with a synthetic one, and everyone embedded in it takes the cue and treats you the same.
I'm old enough to be experiencing this, but I actually like it like this. I had zero desire to own a Labubu when they came out recognizing it as just that generation's flash-in-the-pan fad like beanie babies was for my generation.
So many online services are sold for things I do not care about so I have zero to manage on those.
I'm not seduced to buy the "latest slightly incremental increase in performance" item for 99% of products out there because I have something that does the job for me already.
Some of today's pop music styles I don't like, but there's thousands of hours of music I do like (including a chunk of new stuff) so I'm not put out.
Its actually kind of great to be immune to so much of the advertising thats out there today because you simply don't want what they're selling because they're targeting the younger generation.
While it is commonly shown in media, the "seeing everyone you love die" thing is generally reserved for immortals; but it can happen just getting old, too. You'll likely die long after your grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles. And if you're very unlucky, a lot of people younger than you as well.
I never knew my grandparents. My aunts and uncles all passed over 15 years ago. When my mother died 10 years ago I looked at my siblings and said "we're the old people now" because there were no adults from our youth left alive.
when you're an adult, you are often sedentary, and injuries heal slowly. you have to work at it, either by choosing a lifestyle that facilitates it or by making time for it.
It seems like an obvious answer, but pain is it. It's not like I didn't know old people experienced body pain when I was younger, it just isn't something you really have to think more deeply about. Once you actually get to the point where you've got one or more chronic injuries and you stop remembering what it's like to have a "normal" day, then you realize how little you had to take it into account when you were younger and how little you understood what it was really like.
And beyond the physical pain, it's just a huge bummer. You constantly have to manage medications, you have to constantly be careful not to do something to make it worse, you have to cancel weekend plans if things go south or stop doing certain things altogether.
Being in constant pain literally changes your personality. You get angrier. More depressed. You lash out at those closest to you.
That was what I was going to comment. If you don't stay JUST AS ACTIVE as you did when you were younger, you just ache. Getting up wrong is a thing. Sitting wrong is a thing. Existing can cause pain.
It's weird and miserable. Luckily there's distractions enough.
I'm jumping on this to say that there's a good amount of this pain that you can preemptively avoid by taking care of yourself while you're younger.
Not everything. As you get older your body is stepping closer to the end of its lifespan. But if you don't manage your fat/muscles/tendons/etc, you shouldn't be as surprised when you suddenly find yourselves with bad knees that hurt if you ever try to get active again (that's me!).
If you're young: plan.
If you're old: don't give up. Just try your best to get as much quality of life back as you can, so the last few years of your life aren't spent in a hospital or assistive living facility/nursing home/etc.
How old? I am rapidly nearing 60 and have considerably less pain than when younger because the migraines have nearly vanished and I do yoga instead of running. No chronic pain yet.
Perhaps having negative expectations helped as well, I was sure by now I'd have osteoporosis from early eating disorder, pain in joints from years of ballet, none of these shoes have dropped yet. I do feel weaker than my 40s which were my peak but not weaker than my 30s. And so, so much less pain with fewer migraines.
Things change gradually and at some point you just realize they're gone. I am in pretty good shape, but injuries that used to heal quickly just linger now. I love to go out for drinks, but hangovers just hit so much harder now. I am basically in for two and will regret a third. I might actually be close to one then just soft drinks. I don't feel any different in my mind, but I have to accept that the machine can't keep up.
Rapid aging happens like growth spurts. Around 40-44 apparently again around 65.
Small print becomes a problem, body does not handle alcohol as before, body aches and pains become constant. Exercise is essential, but a setback from an injury or sedentary lifestyle is difficult to escape from.
Watching my little babies run around the house as big kids is crushing the fuck out of my heart. I love them and they're all healthy and happy and that's great but holy fuck its going so fast and they're gonna leave me and idk what I'm gonna do. Brutal shit.
It may get worse. My 3 have all grown up, graduated college and been quite successful. Unfortunately that success has led to job opportunities spread across the country... Oregon, Maine and Arkansas. Having them all gone and so far away is really, really hard. They are doing so well and I talk to them often, but I miss seeing them face-to-face and it's rare to have them all together. It makes me very sad even though I'm happy for them.
I'm in the same boat, and it's a mixed bag. When they were little I used to yearn for some time alone to do my own thing, and now that I have it I want nothing more than for them to be climbing all over me again.
Holy fuck those hormones are a source of unbelievable energy and getting to that feeling you get naturally in your 20s and part of your 30s takes a lot more effort.
Everyday, there’s always a problem to fix. Every fucking day. It can be something in the house that breaks suddenly. Or someone gets sick. Or a pebble causes a crack on your windshield. Or your internet service suddenly jacked up their rates and you have to call to threaten disconnection to bring it down again. Everyday. You can’t go a day without something to do or fix.
Prioritize your health. Living on energy drinks and pizza's looks fine in your twenties but then you head towards your fourties and you take meds for things like hypertension and fight a neverending war against your waist size.
The constant sex, the extra money, the sudden inclination to dunk at basketball, watching your dick get larger, hair getting more vibrant, skin getting fuller, the daily blowjobs, the endless promotions, fast cars, things getting cheaper and more affordable, watching your parents benchpressing monster trucks...
A global pandemic into a sustained recession and silent great depression will derail all the outcomes you'd built momentum towards in earlier life. You will never really fully recover. Whatever you do gain back will be a shadow of what was going to be.
It's the curse of time that the elder generation only has life lessons for what they went through and the younger generation will live through new things that no one had even imagined possible. So every generation has to figure it out for themselves. Our parents educate us for a world that will not exist when we grow up.
Sounds wise, but that's a cop out though. The general lessons are almost always universal. Don't stockpile vaccines for the omicron variant of covid, sure - that won't occur again as viruses evolve, but...
don't dismantle pandemic preparedness procedures within government/healthcare
do have a ready inventory and rapid response manufacturing and supply chain ready for PPE production/distribution
don't count on the general public to be reasonable and selfless in their response to a global threat
do count on the wealthy, and the media they own, downplaying severity and pressuring you to risk your life for their uninterrupted profit.
ETC, ETC, ETC.
Nobody serious prepares their children for the exact scenarios they saw, they generalize what's valuable and then finish by teaching them to be ready to realize that you may be in an entirely different situation, and that will be scary, but if you slow down, you'll realize that there's likely plenty you can take from my experience for helpful shortcuts.
I don't think it's because people don't care, but it's more that the older you get the more you realize how everyone has baggage and we each have to deal with our own. So not that others don't care, but more that everyone is dealing with something hard and traumatic, and trying not to burden others with it.
I love gen z for how empathetic they are, but I'll be curious to see if it continues through to adulthood.
Recent new hire was "sharing" whatever mental thing he has... At work.
Dude, no need to air your laundry at work - we all got shit to get done and that's not helping. We ALL got shit in our heads, no need to burden anyone else with my shit when they got their own.
Right? Work is not the place for it. If you need a mental health day, take a mental health day. You do what you need to, but I'm here just trying to get through the day.
I've been struggling with a loss recently personally, and took a couple days off for it. My boss knew and approved, but I'm not going to drop that on my coworkers. They have their own stresses and drama, they have their own personal demons they need to work on. Last thing they need is me sadly dumping on them. Friends are friends, coworkers are not.
Unironically I do get mad at kids (or anyone) on my lawn in the fall when we're trying to seed it. The rest of the year I couldn't give a fuck, but there's a 3 week stretch where I water the grass twice a day to get the grasslings to grow and people walking on them ruins all that effort. And before anyone comes at me for a monoculture grass lawn, we only do it because our trial of "let it do what it wants" ended in weeds taking over that die in the fall, leaving the yard all dirt, and causing massive erosion when it rained in winter. We literally had to shovel dirt out of our driveway. Our huge back yard is still a sanctuary for bugs and wildlife with native plants and such, but the front yard gets watched over like it's in an HOA because of the headache we had when we let the weeds and native plants win.
So yeah, darn kids better stay off my lawn in late September/early October!
You're getting tired. When you ride your bicycle, it always goes uphill, even when in fact you're going downhill. And the older you grow, the steeper it gets.
when you hit about 45, your mental age is currentAge-20 years-ish but doing an activity associated with mental age can come with some surprising consequences, mostly unhappy surprises at that. But as you continue to age you start accepting who are and start making less stupid choices that are associated with how you mentally feel.
When you're young you vow to yourself not to change which as it turns out isn't that hard. Trouble is the world changes around you. Then you find yourself shaking your fist at the clouds and realize you sound like your parents
retirement age keeps getting higher and healthy living does not necessarily. I have seen people get bad as early as 50's and 60's is typical to have things. few can go through 70's in very good health. Unfortunately most old people that people know are the healthy ones who get out and about more often and I think it kinda slants it.
Your body has a slow self destruct mechanism embedded in it and it starts ticking in middle age. Your body doesn't get broken down because it's old, it's broken down because it's programmed to do so.
I'm 60. At age 45 I decided to make staying healthy a priority and started learning to take better care of myself. I've avoided the aches and pains others report for the most part.
Most everything else said here tracks for me, though.
When things seem less than ideal, I remind myself that there's only one alternative to growing old, and I go out for a walk.
naaa...i want to talk more about best parts of getting older.
Less tolerance for bullshit drama. you seen enough of it. It just doesnt evolve.
Like learning to shift your time better. not waste so much of it like when you're young. especially on dumb drama. and if you learned well: you learned the parts you took in it and are accountable to the choices you make and get some control over your choices. like good people vs bad people to have in your life.
stay learning new things. It is good for the brain. get a hobby. play an instrument. learn to play your favorite songs. write a book about your life. You can always kick ass in life.
learn how to eat for nourishment. not just for pleasure. cook including both. then you can be even healthier than when you were young.
Move a lot more. Like a lot more. dont get used to just sitting on the couch. Couches can turn into a coffin. its fine to watch your shows for some of the day... just dont let the couch turn into a coffin under you. get walkin. especially if your job is sedantary. not enough time? wake half an hour earlier and walk. helps you fall asleep at night when you need to.
Less fear of death. You start seeing enough of it to get the idea. An acceptance. You can still be scared of the dying process though. especially dying with a lot of self imposed suffering like being catastrophically obese and unable to move. hoarding. being abandoned. abandoning yourself and not reaching out for help or doing something about mental health. letting yourself down on your own watch.
but death itself is just more of a rebirth. The fear is that you lived too stupid/blaming everyone and holding no accountability and you dont want to have to do all of it all over again with the same amount of stupid. there is enough examples of how not to live. pay attention to that. you owe yourself on that.
Some experiences that your parents or church told you not to do, like drinking, drugs, finding a partner or being in a relationship, or even having sex are experiences that should be started when you're 18. It's like building a muscle: You have to try it to see if you like it, have a tolerance for it, and know what to do to recover from overdoing it or making a mistake.
Essentially, make mistakes when you're young, cause excuses get harder to make when you're in your 30s or 40s.
at least youngest gen z and younger than them, that being a YOUTUBER isnt all cracked up to be, ive heard many accounts how alot of them want to be only that, because "its easier to make money". unless you are rich and wealthy you can attempt to do that and you can afford to fail and do nothing and come up with new ideas, even the current older influencers are wealthy people. and you need staff, producers, original ideas,,,etc.
only the super old og yotbers are likely not coming from money(minus PPDIE). with that behind, msot of them tend to end up being shady or pos in real life eventually.
job market, with AI screening out resumes, its harder to get a job now for certain stem degrees like CS and bio-tech(not health). and degrees that already had a bad time finding jobs, will be even more difficult.
I would have to say sleep injuries and slowdown of body function.
I used to be a stomach sleeper and now my arms and hands go to sleep right away. If I lay on my side and don't have a pillow, whichever knee is on top will sag and hurts like a bitch for a day and a half afterward.
Body-function-wise, I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted and stay in shape, that is increasingly less true. To keep in shape I spend more time being hungry and also having to make better decisions about food; you don't just turn out a nice turd no matter what after about 33 and the alternatives are not great. Also alcohol is nowhere near as friendly as it used to be: if I have enough to drink that I get a buzz now, I will be sick the next day until like 2 in the afternoon.
271 replies
Realizing how stupid you were when you were young.
The alternative is not realizing it. Realizing how stupid you used to be is how you grow.
Too bad many people never get to that point and keep the same stupid beliefs they had as children that their dumb parents forced upon them.
And it never ends! When I was 25, I cringed at how I was when I was a teenager, but I was glad that at least I wasn't like that anymore. Now that I'm in my 30s, I cringe at how I was when I was 25!
Later you'll cringe at how you were in your thirties, forties and so on.
Exactly! 😫
(hopefully)
I'm in my fifties and still occasionally cringe about things I did last week.
Lol that's some pretty good self-awareness
Still making rapid developments I see!
For me it is more like, when you interact with young adults - you will able to see the difference between developing and actually developmed brain.
Tho not everyone reaches that point.
And yes. We all been that stupid.
No one cringes at the thought of pooping their pants when they were 1 year old. It's normal development at the time and soon you move on.
It's the same at any age. It really should carry on like this if you continue to learn and grow through your life.
But it’s very different when you’re a typical healthy adult and someone reminds you: you’re almost at an age where it’s normal to poop your pants. Talk about cringe
Pooping your pants seems like a numbers game.
Like a shart, you have to roll the dice a lot, but usually win. Eventually, your card gets pulled.
So when it happens to me, I plan on laughing about it and dealing with it. And until then, working on continually improving and balancing my diet, and anal health and happiness.
I have a principle of not judging my younger self for not knowing better. Hindsight isn't helpful.
Anyway, there are lots of people who don't learn from their experiences, so they're fools when they're in their 70s just like they were fools in their 20s. The only difference is that they had 50 years of opportunities to learn, but because they were fools, they didn't. That makes old fools even worse than young ones.
That's the worst part!? Not having to mourn friends and family while being stuck in this ever-worsening world? Or hoping you have enough retirement saved up and invested in the right, safe things since you become less and less capable every day (to say nothing of being less employable). You have to watch as your body gradually fails and your agency is taken away; you also gradually lose more and more of your senses and personality and less and less people who know and care about you are around, you lose your memories and eventually your own sanity and are left trapped in your own mind, not knowing who you are or what's happening...
But yeah, I do have that one cringe moment as a teenager.
I'll tell you the worst thing. Far worse than anyone else here can mention.
Time is constantly accelerating. When you are 5, the concept of a year is nearly an eternity. But your perception of time changes the older you get. Every year is shorter and shorter. Like you are on a constantly accelerating ship headed to the end of existence.
Keep doing new and novel things. It helps!
Humans adapt. We have abysmal bandwidth, so we have adapted. If anything is normal you don’t notice. You reserve bandwidth for the unexpected. You already know how to react and what to do/feel regarding daily life.
Break rhythm
Absolutely, you stop measuring the passage of time in days and years and start measuring it in experiences. When you're young and everything is new it's absolutely full. The 10th or hundredth time you've done something you handle it more easily but it also starts to seem like one 'thing'.
Routine is the quickest way to looking back on life and feeling like it was the blink of an eye.
People can't afford experiences anymore
Most of my best experiences didn't cost anything except some time.
Those are the best, time well spent.
Many can't afford time either
Yeah, the nervous system works by detecting deltas. Gradual changes can sneak up on you.
Use it or lose it is true of the mind and the body. And it's better to burn out than to fade away (and no, I don't mean taking Kurt's way out).
I feel this way precisely because I keep doing new and novel things: there are so much to learn, think, and try out, I feel I am constantly in a rush.
When I was younger, I either have well-defined tasks or I would hit technical blocks forcing me to stop for a long time. Now, I get to work on all the hard problems to my heart's desire, and is also more skilled, thus hits way less blocks. I am in a constant race against my own ideas and desires to try new things...
It is cool and fulfilling, but also terribly exhausting most of the time :(
I don't think that's true. Time is relative so it's only accelerating if you're in a comfy routine with fewer distinct points of reference. There's an easy fix for that.
From my perspective, I believe it is true. I'm only late 30s, and I've been filling my time with more "firsts" than ever before, but I can't remember the last time I ever thought "damn, time is really dragging on today".
I've got a relatively new career; I've been trying my hand at politics (was just 150 votes from winning an election this year!); I've been getting involved with volunteer work; I've gotten involved in activism, going to protests, anti-racism rallies, removing stickers, posters and flags placed to cause division and hate; I've been bonding with the most beautiful parrot my fiancée and I rescued; I'm teaching my son to drive; - the list goes on. My schedule is pretty relaxed, but whenever I look at the time of day I think "hell, how did that all go so quick?".
I've been making a few mistakes just this week because my brain has refused to update the fact that we're 5 days into July already and we're no longer in mid June.
I dunno. Maybe it's time perception, maybe I have early onset Alzheimer's, or maybe I have early onset Alzheimer's.
Your life sounds amazing. Glad you're doing things you love <3
30s? You are still a baby. There is a long way to go my friend. There are literally no limitations on what you can do right now.
I've hit a point where I can do a lot of the things I passed on previously because I was always busy or didn't feel like I had the money. It doesn't slow anything down. I can't actually remember all the things I've done. I don't regret doing all these things because I get reminded about them over time, but it's still just a fuller life, not a slower life. Things I "recently" put on hold have been waiting for years. Projects that were deemed critical at the time have gone unfinished, mostly proving nothing was critical.
And that's not to say to have a full life, you have you be bouncing off the walls from airports to other continents to concerts to festivals to soup walks to ski resorts to motorcycle rides to beaches to parties to home improvement projects to artistic endeavors. That's just my flavor, slotting things into the schedule as they fit.
I thought about this recently. When you're 5, a year is 20% of your life. When you're 50, it's 2% of your life. Not surprising it goes quicker.
This is true. I barely notice summers anymore. They used to stretch out and now feel compressed into 6 week stretch when other people aren't available.
One of my kids freaked out the other day when he realized it was July and we still hadnt gone to the pool! My wife and I had barely noticed, our weekends have been busy, but the summer is already 1/3 gone!
We went Saturday
Time is literally accelerating according to scientific studies as well.
We're always moving through time capped at C minus velocity through space, so the only way that could accelerate is if we're slowing down moving through space?
Source: AzerNews https://share.google/OHbtuFQKe5MMVaUcC
The older you get the less time with friends and more time alone you have.
Which is why it's a good skill to learn to be comfortable being alone. Had to learn this the hard way my first year of living on campus and not really gelling socially with my dormmates.
Being neurodivergent and coming from high school where most of my friendships were formed from convenience made forming new friendships complicated in college.
To some degree that's true, but socializing is obligatory for brain health as you age
Yeah, you realize how many "friends" were just acquaintances and disappear.
Happy cake day!
You start to realize there's only a finite amount of time left and start having to choose what you're going to start based on what you'll be able to finish and what you could have spent your finite time on instead of.
Also loved ones and close friends passing away is hard, but the state before that... getting ill and their health going downhill... no longer able to be the person you grew up with. It's mentally rough.
Finally, your body no longer being able to cash the check your mind wants to write.
Having to be the primary caretaker for my dad before he passed while trying and failing to reconcile with the emotional abuse and detachment from my childhood still fucks me up to this day.
I hear you…I live in a different part of the state than my parents now, but when I see my dad, who used to be a big strong guy (and a bit of an asshole), wither into a ghost of his former self is hard to process for the reason you mentioned. He was emotionally and a little physically abusive, so I battle empathy and bitterness in my head.
I'm sorry, that sounds so difficult. I've already seen so many in my life wither as they had to become caretakers and/or caretakees, and I'm only 40.
One of the things I'd say to your first paragraph is that you're never too old to learn something new. I'm a driving instructor and I've had learners who are over 60. Though, sadly I have seen first hand what you're talking about. One lady I taught a few years ago at 62 years old had to stop taking lessons because her hip was going... Our last lesson was the last time I saw her 😭
Yeah, I meant it both ways.
1.) What you choose to do and what you decide isn't worth your time gets seems to get increasingly a more important choice to make.
2.) You also start to realize "I'm not here forever, I should get off my ass and do that thing I've always wanted to do. I'm not getting any younger."
I mean, time is always finite. We just seem to start with the delusion that it's not.
The body is like a machine, and the older you get: parts suddenly break down and can’t be fixed anymore. Some parts got damaged when you were young (meniscus, teeth, hearing) and they then start causing problems when you’re old. It’s practically impossible to loose weight after 50. Your libido goes down the drain.
I'd say depending on the person, losing weight becomes hard in your 30s if you don't keep up with it.
Hi, it's me, I'm the one who hasn't really kept up with it aside from changing my diet. Nothing drastic, just cutting down on what I eat, in no small part thanks to the economy.
Also, all my weight caught up to me in that I have high blood pressure and mild sleep apnea, both of which can be controlled if not eliminated outright if I just exercised more.
The average American lifestyle kind of discourages exercise and eating well. It's also very stressful. I certainly can't fault people for not doing it. I imagine those conditions exist a lot of other places too. I also started gaining a bit more weight in my mid to late thirties but I also rediscovered bicycling during that time. I didn't really lose any weight, but the way it was concentrating in my belly slowed down or even reversed a little bit. I'm amazed at how much it balanced my mood. Still working on those glutes of steel though.
I'm a guy, and I imagine you're correct. Hormones change over time and with age. I usually get blood work done when I go in for a physical and have had those conversations. Everything is looking good, I'm just getting older. He did encourage me to keep up the exercise.
Yeah, I have put on as much weight from 50 - 52 as I did from 40 - 50. But I have moved from working hard to hardly working (moved into a management position) so it's hardly surprising I guess
I've done that move before, but much earlier.
I think about it occasionally: when you're a baby/kid/teen/youngadult, you're eating for energy and for growth. But once you're fully grown, unless you're building a ton of muscle, you don't really need to eat nearly as much.
I think there's a periodical reassessment of neutral caloric gain/loss that should happen, especially once one's metabolism stabilizes. In other words, expressly figure out how how much you need to eat in order to not gain or lose weight, once your lifestyle and energy use is stable.
This is made more difficult because it's actually better for you to eat more and burn it off/use it, than it is to just very little.
Edit: And obviously, this is much easier said than done. But, gotta figure out the goal and take iterative steps to figure it out, right?
Woah there. I agree with part of this but so much is more a "use it or lose it" situation. I'm almost 60, husband a couple years older, we still fuck every day and I get off at least once a day still. I do think it's muted a bit, slightly less intense usually but way more multiples, so it kind of works out.
Did gain weight at menopause that stuck - sort of gamed that by starting out underweight so I'm still not fat, but agree wholeheartedly it doesn't fall right off like it did, part of that I think is my worry that if I lose it my bones will suffer, so I don't want to diet. Still in good shape just smack in the middle of healthy BMI when I was aiming for the bottom of it.
Teeth are STUPID, we should not get the final set so young.
Everything takes so, so long to heal now.
My mom said the worst thing about getting old was that you could not make plans. She planned to come up here to see Tab Benoit with a group of friends but by the day of the show two of them had died.
Uh. I don’t know that that’s normal. You have my envy, though.
My wife and I were like that at that age. We've wound down a bit since then, but twice a week is still much better than never.
A tip for the guys: tes levels drop as your percent of body fat increases. Maintain muscle mass and stay lean and you probably won't need the boner pills even when you're old as dirt.
Y'know the bathtub curve? It applies to any complex system. Beyond a certain point, entropy hits multiple subsystems in parallel. You can mitigate it, but the effort to do so increases over time.
The loneliness as all of your loved ones die and your friends disappear.
As a kid I wanted to live forever. As an adult I understand how that would be endless torchure.
I lay here in an empty bed. This time last year I had a wife, 3 cats and a dog. Its been a brutal year to say the least.
I've lost my dad, my brother, and most recently lost a good friend. I'm only 31, so I know what you mean. These have all been extremely painful and difficult to live through, but fuck, I can't imagine losing my life partner.
I'm really sorry for your loss. Life really does take some of us for a ride. Hope you manage to find some peace and happiness eventually.
You aren’t getting any more teeth, so take care of the ones you have.
Stress produces cortisol. Cortisol reduces your empathy.
Like Casandra, knowing the future won’t make you happy or get people to listen to you.
Intelligence is setting your medication to automatically arrive when you run out. Wisdom is having it arrive a week before you run out.
That makes a lot of sense
People who don't take care of themselves can't take care of others.
And your gums. Actually floss. No one wants to but your 60 year old self will thank you.
Wearing braces for the first time at 60, because my teeth decided to start moving around enough to affect eating. And it’s just getting worse from here. I brushed: no cavities ever. I have good health/genes: one root canal is my only tooth issue. But I hated flossing and rarely did, and my dentists pointed out gum health over the decades, so here we are
I wish you'd told me this years ago. I still struggle with needing to be proven right. It's exhausting.
It's still better to know than not know, though, right?
Right???
This is the way
Stress produces cortisol. Cortisol reduces your empathy.
Thanks, needed that today, really helps.
I'm guessing most people on Lemmy have already experienced this.
Like I say at work: I'm here to share my knowledge and experience, not to be an Old Testament prophet. If you choose not to listen, it's on you. And I keep minutes in case anyone asks "why didn't you tell them?"
Not to belittle your point cause people should actively take care of their teeth but
https://www.dentistrytoday.com/researchers-in-japan-discover-medicine-capable-of-regrowing-third-set-of-teeth-for-humans/
To watch your body deteriorate more and more, and your brain as well. It makes life harder, little by little, every day.
Old people don't do so many things anymore because they just can't, because it gets too hard.
Not doing things anymore that you have always done, that is one definition of dying (some start it very soon in their life). In the end you don't do anything anymore.
Unforeseeable circumstances like injury or illness aside, much of the bodily degredation people succumb to is voluntary. Our bodies are very much "use it or lose it" and if you're sedentary and disregard the importance of diet, you'll have a bad time.
Things like arthritis and other autoimmune diseases are life changing, probably more common than you think, and probably affecting younger people than you think.
Wat? The first sentence was an acknowledgement of illness and injury. I'm not discounting those realities at all.
In the context of the message you were replying to you were definitely downplaying the proportion of people's physical problems that are not in their control. The fact you did a slippery slimy acknowledgment that uncontrollable problems exist at all doesn't absolve you of that.
"slippery slimy" wow, ok.
I'm already seeing this and regretting this in my 40s... relatively young, but a lot of little problems that my peers brush away as being inevitable, i know i could likely have avoided if i was more active in my youth.
And all thesr little issues pile up over years until people throw up their hands and say "its just getting old, nothing i can do!!"
Its all about probability. Nothing in guaranteed. But i could probably avoid a lot of issues if i was more aware and active in my youth...
I'm super active now, and i aspire to be like an 82 year old man i met who walks 20km every day
Someone on Lemmy told me your body will hurt all the time in your 30's. On the subject, old people IRL were all like WTF, no. I'm guessing the cohort here is pretty sedentary.
What a hybris.
Not really.
Very little is really in our control, after all, despite what the medical world loves to shout at us.
Not saying don't work at it (do what you can) aging is a real bitch and causes changes we simply have no way to prevent - and not just disease, just aging.
I disagree, most of that is very much manageable. You can age very gracefully if you invest into yourself. In fact I do much more in my 40s than I ever did.
I'm still pretty young yet but one thing I've noticed with growing older is how less and less people your age seem to want to have fun. I don't mean acting silly I mean finding time for joy in life and expressing that inner child. And yet they still make mistakes and deal with them like a kid would :/
It really feels like being with children acting like adults, who have forgotten how to be children. Just weird lol.
Yeah, one thing that’s held true throughout the years is that no one really leaves high school in their heads. I’m generalizing and referring to groups rather than individuals.
Yeah, I was always too hung up on being mature, responsible, preparing for the future …. One of the many great things about having kids was rediscovering how to act like a kid!
It's like their ego grows to the point it strangles their joy, although I'm still only at the beginning of seeing this in my peers.
You're tired all the time. You realize there's degrees of tired and you figure out how to do things at different levels.
I took off work this week and have napped almost every day... Still tired but in a better mood than I've been in in months. Sigh
Three main things from my personal experience.
Sleep is shit. I remember when I was a teen or in my early 20s. I could sleep like a baby for 10 hours straight and wake up like tigger, raring to to, full of vim and vigour. Now I sleep in half hour bites. Each time I wake, I have to change position because some bit or other feels like it's going to sleep (the irony!) or just hurts. At least once in the night I need to pee. My dreams, at this point, inevitably become some variation of me looking for a toilet and they're always dirty or broken or something is wrong with them. I wake feeling tired, even if I get 10 hours in bed.
Chronic arthritis. I'm not that old (late 50s) but my hips are utterly fucked. I can't walk for more than a couple of miles before the pain starts. I can't have steroids because (apparently) my hips might just fall apart. I can't have hip replacement surgery (Fuck! That's something old people have done!) because the arthritis isn't currently sufficiently debilitating.
People no longer notice you. When I was younger I was a good looking guy. I had girlfriends who made everyone's head turn. Women fancied me, men were envious of me. Now, I'm just some old guy. It's pretty fucking rare that anyone gives me a second glance. I'm just some old guy.
I have noticed this as well. I joke with the students that us old guys all look the same so they'll have trouble telling us apart for awhile. But it's true.
Until like 5-10 years ago, I've been traveling a lot, and in the evening, I'd take the tram or go on foot, sometimes 30-60 minutes, and go to bars, restaurants, no problem. In some city that's completely unknown to me. After pretty heavy drinking and with just a few hours of sleep, I'd get up in the morning and travel on.
Nowadays, when checking in after, let's say, a 2 hours journey, all I want to do is watch TV in my suite, end of story.
As to 3.: That can still happen, and it's quite rewarding when it does. Just a few months ago, I've been turning heads again because I started dating a cover model for dentist's office magazines. All eyes were glued to them wherever we went.
Then one day, you're sitting all sobered up in some hotel room with what suddenly appears to be the phoniest person on the planet, and you start to realize beauty isn't all there is.
It fucking hurts.
Seriously, every day there's a new ache or pain. Things that never hurt when I was younger now hurt if I think about them wrong.
Body on Monday: "So we're taking a step today, are we? Not without your ankle suddenly feeling like a knitting needle is being driven through it for the next week".
Body on Tuesday: "Sneezed, huh? Enjoy the feeling of your lower trapezius muscles being ripped from your back!"
Body on Wednesday: "Did you turn your head slightly to glance over that way? Boy, you don't like this neck, do you?!"
Body on Thursday: "Yeah, nothing fancy today. Just flaring up this old back injury, because you turned over in your sleep".
And so on ...
I'm 70. Nothing hurts. It's not inevitable, though the odds worsen as you age.
Exercise helps. Stretching is more challenging, though. You need to go slow and maintain correct form or you'll wish you had.
What really sucks is that friends and family my age are getting ill and dying at an accelerating rate.
Right on. My school's Capoeira mestre is in his 70's. Healthy as a horse, flexible, freaking ripp'd, and has the wisdom and experience to still take anybody down. Needed his hips replaced recent though.
I can't possibly train that hard. That's what happens when you make a martial art your entire life. But I'm hoping I can at least avoid becoming a shuffling little shrimp-postured man by staying moving and flexible. Lol
Survivor bias probably. There was picture of Ernie Hudson on Lemmy recently who is just crushing it at 80. Given large enough numbers there are some people who will just defy all odds for a while. And they will attribute their longevity to something other than chance. Capoeira, cooking with bacon grease, use/abstinence of alcohol, hard work, protecting leisure time. None of it means anything if you wait long enough.
The weight of experience.
The heartbreaks, failures, disappointments, and losses you experience in your youth accrue and do permanent damage over time. Also, everything you loved in your youth will be unrecognizably different or gone completely within 20-30 years. (Which is why I recommend people get in the habit of journaling.)
Also, you won't digest food as well as you age and your digestion's going to get weird.
Suddenly, I can’t handle porter beers anymore. All other beers and alcohols have the usual effects, but porters give the worst hangovers even with minimal consumption.
At random, I struggle with milk. Happened consistently for a while, I stopped drinking milk. I started again after a year or so, I was fine again. Nowadays once a year or so milk hits wrong and I can’t digest it, while I can most of the time.
Caffeine hits way more as well. I used to not care, now two coffees/a big coke and I can’t sleep for hours.
Something like 70% of adults are lactose intolerant. It's well known milk was very much an infant thing and not really for adults as we evolved.
However we have a very powerful dairy lobby which tries to tell us we're all wrong and we do want the extra cheese.
Regarding caffeine and alcohol: I feel like combination dehydration and awareness really hits. Like you become more aware of how things affect you, but I've also noticed a TON of people most don't drink fucking water and enough water. Like, holy. Drink more gd water.
I’m usually significantly over the recommended water intake in summer, but in winter I kind of forget water exists and I have to force myself to drink
Me becoming lactose intolerant in my early to mid twenties hit me like a fucking truck in the worst way possible. I ate an ice cream sandwich one day and was constipated for a week.
It’s quite the opposite for me. It can have a delay of half an hour to a few hours, but eventually my digestion goes:
🚨 🚨 🚨 Lactose detected. 🚨🚨🚨
Everything OUT! RIGHT NOW!
I developed a pineapple allergy late in life. Not sure if it was due to COVID or aging but if I eat pineapple now, my tongue gets a bunch of circular sores that last for days.
The future seems distant but the past is an instant. Your life seems like it went by in a flash.
You've just got to assume any moment now you'll be elderly and on your deathbed. You never waste time that way.
It sure comes with constant existential angst though.
"If this was my last day alive, would I seriously wanna be going to work?"
..."K, but you gotta plan a little further ahead there, buddy..."
For sure, "live like it's your last day" is a very different thing, and not good advice. You should take your chance at making a memory when it comes (within reason), but you should also go to work (preferably at a job you can at least tolerate).
There's things that don't fall in either category that you have to ration, though. Slot machines seem like a pretty uncontroversial example. Gaming or streaming can be worthwhile, YMMV, but few would argue every hour done has been worth it. Doomscrolling is a little bit of a self-own to put on Lemmy, but the same for that.
Basically, it seems like old us would want us to use time, not waste it.
In your mid 30s all the pets you and your friends got as your first pets as “adults” die. That first dog for your first place? Dead. That first cat after college? Dead. They all die in the same ~5 years period so you relive your loss through your friends over and over, and dog save you if those happened to be the pets your children were born with… it’s so hard
RIP Evey, Momo, Bonnie, Otie, Maddoc, Buddy Lee, Twinkie, Blue and Pippen, among so many others, we still miss you 💔
My wife and I have been married for 15 years, our 9th cat is now 2 years old.
We started with my two, and her two. Magic (1), Carmen (2), Max (3), and Paddy (4).
We lost Magic and Carmen (siblings) when they were 15. Then Paddy.
We took in Whisper (5), as a stray, then got Rocket (6) and Keanu (7).
We were forced to downsize and limited to two cats. Our son was attached to Max, and took him. He later died from cancer.
Whisper DEMANDED the outdoor life and was adopted by a horse farm where he was hit by a car.
When we bought a house, two of our neighbor cats had litters so we took in Lorelei (8) and Willow (9).
Your body ages faster than your brain. Your brain says “go ahead, jump!” Your body says, “aw fuck!”
It can feel like you're slowly fading out of existence. Almost like you're gradually becoming a ghost. No one cares that much about anything you have to say or anything you do because you're old. I'm lucky because I have a home that's mine and I'm surrounded by family and friends, but I'm starting to realise how hard it must be if you get old without those things. Like becoming invisible alone. Also, it's pretty obvious now that the end is coming at some point. When it does I hope it's quick. I hope I don't see it coming and that I don't end up being a burden on my loved ones.
I was going to use the phrase "becoming irrelevant", but you did a better job.
You have to live with all the mistakes you've made your entire life.
Realizing, that adults are just as clueless as kids when dealing with problems. They just don't have anyone that will solve it for them.
COVID was when I realized that there aren't any adults in the room. Just kids in oversized bodies.
Because with some exceptions the majority of the biggest decision makers don't get to be decision makers because they are smart, but because they got lucky (usually by having an ancestor that got lucky, today)
Losing friends is probably up there.
My best friend since childhood died last year and that just destroyed me. Lost my mom just a couple months later which made things worse, but not as much as everyone thinking losing my mom was the only major loss I've had in the last year. I hate how much losing my friend seems to just get ignored when talking to even my therapist about all the things that has happened to me over the last year.
First you go to birthday parties, then party parties, then graduation parties, bachelor/bachelorette parties, weddings, your friend's kid's parties then funerals
It never stops feeling weird and shocking to me how many people I've known that died before age 30.
What got them? Diseases? Accidents?
I'm 60 and gave seen a lot of water under that bridge. A really good friend of mine who is in their early 40s and just got a cancer diagnosis this week. It never gets easier.
Well I'm guess I'm lucky that I don't have friends.
work on that, if you can.
It's traumatic for many. People start to realize that they actually age in their 30s and turn to weird shit because they don't know how to deal with trauma of aging.
Rampant discrimination against older people, especially women is crazy and something you don't fully notice until you or your peers are affected directly.
The fastest rise in homeless demographic are women over 50. GOP are directly putting your mothers and grandmothers on the street effectively murdering them
Now I want to know what demographic is second, and what demographics if any are shrinking. Do you have a link?
If the increase rates keep going like this, half the country will be homeless in ten years, the entire country in 25.
The second demographic that's rising is children. The third latino/Hispanic.
The_Age_Structure_of_Contemporary_Homelessness_WEB.pdf https://share.google/ZKc3wwukXoFtp4RU6
State of Homelessness: 2025 Edition - National Alliance to End Homelessness https://share.google/wZ60XTDMMfEq68fwD
The Fastest-Growing Homeless Demographic – Aging in America News https://share.google/a6H4RHJBHu16QBG1l
The shrinking demographics are children with families and veterans, (finally).
I hear old people talk about this, but then they run every government and large business, have most of the money, and get like the majority of government services as well.
That's why country clubs and those 55+ walled suburban enclaves are a thing, I guess lol.
Some of the older people do that. Others are 85-year-old wal-mart greeters.
Yes. Obviously, there's a whole lot of other axes at play here. What "race" and gender they are, how rich and powerful their parents were, if they had a career in computing or slide rule sales...
Just taken as a lump group, and compared to younger lump groups, though, there's no contest.
Porque no los dos
Sure, maybe. I guess until it's us young people's turn, it'll be hard to know how much is real, and how much is directionless crankyness or early dementia.
And FWIW there's dumber things to build a hierarchy around. The very young understand little.
Vision changes. Can't read my tablet with my glasses on. Can't read the TV with them off.
Becoming a widower really really sucks.
The aches and pains are rough some times. The stupid crap you did that was fun as a kid will find you eventually.
Starting to lose the strength I always had. Used to be able to lift nearly anything i could put my arms around. Carrying a clothes dryer up a set of stairs by myself wasn't bad. Still strong but not like I was.
Varifocal lenses are magic.
I do miss wearing contacts, but I don't produce enough tears anymore and don't like sneaking off to put in saline drops throughout the day. So now I just wear glasses.
Yeah I was considering monovision for contacts actually. My late wife did that and she was happy with it. I don't really have a dominant eye so it should allow me to see ok close and far without bifocal lenses.
I got laser surgery in my 50s because I never had the right glasses with me. Can highly recommend. Wish I'd done it in my 30s.
I wanted lasik done but was told my vision was too good at that point.
Right now I have too much other stuff happening.
Witnessing all the people who die, such as parents, friends, family, and famous people.
It's been my peer group, and relatives my age, that have affected me the most.
My parents were both old, were in good shape until very near the ends of their lives, and went fast. But with people who are very old, you can get some of your mourning done in advance. It's not that big of a surprise when they check out.
It's a mercy sometimes for them to pass.
The family is one thing, and I think most people expect that.
But something about seeing all the actors and singers and whatever people slowly get SUPER old and die, and constantly replaced with new people you dgaf about who are younger than you, just reminds you that the world is slowly becoming not for your parents, then not for you, and then not for people who are younger than you. And then THOSE people get old and you think "Jesus Christ how old am I?"
I'm not looking forward to it, but suppose I should just embrace it.
I wonder if the correct way to do this is to find stuff you actually care about, and stick with it. So that "outside" remains as outside, and "my interests" remain in my vision.
Or maybe there's nothing really to do besides know it's coming and brace my anis?
I was thinking about this the other day. Brad Pitt, Matthew McConaughey, and Val Kilmer are no longer the chosen lead. At least not as much. Now it's timothee chalamet and I don't get it. I haven't watched much of his movies though.
I am still bummed out about David Bowie's passing. Will there be anyone who can fill his shoes?
Losing friends to suicide hurts the soul. And I thought I had more time with my dad and brother. It's weird to keep living after all these events.
I rewatched Equilibrium the other day in many years, and it's WILD how similar Timothy Chalmet is to Christian Bale. Chalamet is fine, but he's just alright. I personally always thought Bale was more charming.
Regarding Bowie, no. I think he had his own thing going, and for the era then, there are and were movie stars and famous musicians. Now, however, things are so much more fragmented, that fanbases and hype are basically forced capitalism. There's more small-scale glimmer, all over the internet and in various places, but the monolithic "Star" that everybody knows, as a concept, is basically over, and the idea will likely die along with the remnants of them who are still alive, and those of us who knew them. Just like with the silent movies of yore, people like Robert De Niro will slip into legend. Or, those things, like the '80s, will have established themselves as near-permanent tropes and concepts, and will be riffed upon and evolved until they fully dissolve, break down, and integrate themselves into normal, everyday real life society. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 and the up-and-coming GTA VI are a sign of this.
But going on that basically nobody these days even knows who Ray Liotta is, may be a sign that both may be happening.
I'm still waiting for a replacement for John "Total Biscuit" Bain.
I've luckily never lost friends to suicide, only other things. I can only imagine how much that would change the world.
I must be younger or luckier than you, because I still have my immediate family, for now. Though, I'd be lying if I didn't often wonder the ultimate question of purpose. I don't look forwards to a lot of these aspects of growing older, but recently have accepted that one day, death is simply saying goodbye to the world and taking the forever sleep. I'll certainly miss it, even the pain and misery, for that, too, is part of being lucky enough to be alive.
A lot has already been said, but one I didn’t see that I truly never expected is that I’m losing my grip strength. I drop things all the time now, and those pickle jars don’t open nearly as easily.
Nah it's the cans that are getting tighter !
Getting older is great! You've been around long enough to see how some things change while others stay the same. You start to care more about some things and less about the rest. Every year is my favorite age! Except for the year i lost my mom- that was worst thing about aging.
No purpose, no goal. My entire life has been driven by: goto college, meet someone, get married, buy a house, have a kid, pay for college, save for retirement. Ok, done?
Hope you had more good times than bad
For sure. It’s mainly psychological, feeling a bit adrift. Trying f to transition from always working toward a long term goal to … not. And obviously you don’t want to just exist and kill time. There’s a whole world of short term experiences and satisfaction just waiting for the right shift in mindset
I had a reckless youth. I literally never thought about being old let alone plan for it. So here I am and I still don't have a vision for it. My wife and I talk about this all the time because we have both moved a lot during our careers and don't have a natural home. With compromises we can probably live anywhere.
Missed the college and house, but right there with you.
We definitely must endeavor to find our path in life, besides that of the "citizen unit" that simply contributes to the economy and population then passes the torch.
Tyler Durden?
Sebastian? Sebastian, is that you?
A lot of comments here with legitimate aspects of getting older, but not many that aren't fairly common knowledge.
I offer the compressed sense of time as you age. Everything just seems to go by faster and faster leaving you wondering where all your time went when things are over.
My personal theory is that this is kinda like an "echo" in Minority Report.
Basically, when you're still fresh, everything is new. Brain is like "Write this down! Interesting!"
But a lot of adult life stops being an adventure. You clock in and out, automatically say "fine thanks, you?" to the thousandth "how's it goin" that year, drive the same route to and from the job, the grocery store, etc...
The brain has seen this before. The experience isn't novel. It tosses it out with the trash. Why hang on to a million copies of
"Went_to_Work_did_stupid_job_had_reheated_chicken.mp4"? You also are getting crappier sleep, so things don't record as readily to long term storage.Heck, I would clock in, hear the stupid "ding" sound, and legit not be sure if I actually just did that or if my brain was recalling the billion other times I've done it, 30 seconds later.
So anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, the key to a long experienced life might be to keep your brain "guessing" by switching things up, trying things differently, always learning new skills, trying to interact with different kinds of people.
The endless, rote, routine is a certain kind of hell.
Anyway, I'm no neurologist or anything, just another frustrated working class, but I think I'm on the money here lol.
Yup, a week is such a long time in school, I'm in my thirties and I see months go by so quickly
Be wary of burnout. That shit takes years to recover from.
Can confirm. Do not recommend.
I'm thinking of moving from my higher paying career field to one that will pay me a nearly break even salary (for this living area) because my heart just isn't in this anymore. Talking days of staring at the screen and not doing anything. Feels bad yo.
How close are you to retirement? If you increased savings from [high paying career], how much longer would you have to work at it before you could stop working altogether?
Not close to retirement. Can't save because of family debt that I didn't accrue. If I was solo I would lean fire my way into a nice small house somewhere to chill but that ain't happening.
Money ain't worth it. Find something that makes you happy!
Healing slower and the inability to cash in on potential.
You get smarter but young people keep being dumb.
All right all right all right.
It's an underrated tragedy.
I'm not ancient, but I do think about all the shit I had to painstakingly learn, and that everyone who's born has to painstakingly learn it all again.
Eh, it feels to me like the dumb kids are as dumb as always, but the smart kids are smarter than they used to be
In my 30's, if my pee was extra yellow I'd think "Wow" and then get on with my life. In my 70's, if my pee is extra yellow I think " My organs are broken! I'm dying!".
I think you just need to drink more?
They drank 4 liters of water is the plot twist
That you feel like you woke up in a completely different meat suit, than the one you were used to for 40 odd years. Nothing is the same. Clothes don't fit the same, you can't pull off the same styles you once could, you can't bend or reach the same. Injuries seem to be delivered by someone with a voodoo doll of you and a lifetime of object jealousy. The view from the top of the hill, doesn't look any different than the incline, they lied to you about that. Your brain and who you are feels the same as your late 20yo brain, but with some well learned lessons under its belt, so you kinda watch everything slide around you, it kinda feels like that time lapse of the fruit rotting. And time moves faster. When you're 10, one year is a larger portion of your life than one year is, comparatively against 40 odd years, and it literally feels like that. It gets to a point where a year feels like a month. But your emotions and perspective on the world slows down and zooms out, and now you can see the forest for the trees. You realise you were a little brainwashed into thinking certain things mattered, that really really didn't at all. The flip side of that coin, is knowing what really matters, and appreciating it so much more. You can't achieve that without trying every biscuit on the tray. My you be blessed with the privilege to learn what it feels like to grow old with yourself. Not all of us do.
Being excluded from culture when you feel like the same person you always were. At some point in your life, every TV commercial, every new service, every trending product will be aimed right at you. And then you'll age out of the marketer's target bracket, and suddenly the party is over and you might as well be dead.
It doesn't sound like a big deal because all that stuff is bullshit anyway, except our entire human culture has been replaced with a synthetic one, and everyone embedded in it takes the cue and treats you the same.
On the bright side, the grocery store music has started playing bangers these days.
People who push 100 must feel like they're living on a totally different planet than the one they were born on.
I'm not even close to that old and I have trouble understanding GenZ conversation in public sometimes.
It's already weird for me to think about what home interiors and cars used to look like when I was a kid. Those are totally different now.
I'm old enough to be experiencing this, but I actually like it like this. I had zero desire to own a Labubu when they came out recognizing it as just that generation's flash-in-the-pan fad like beanie babies was for my generation.
So many online services are sold for things I do not care about so I have zero to manage on those.
I'm not seduced to buy the "latest slightly incremental increase in performance" item for 99% of products out there because I have something that does the job for me already.
Some of today's pop music styles I don't like, but there's thousands of hours of music I do like (including a chunk of new stuff) so I'm not put out.
Its actually kind of great to be immune to so much of the advertising thats out there today because you simply don't want what they're selling because they're targeting the younger generation.
While it is commonly shown in media, the "seeing everyone you love die" thing is generally reserved for immortals; but it can happen just getting old, too. You'll likely die long after your grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles. And if you're very unlucky, a lot of people younger than you as well.
My grandparents died when I was 7. Mom died when I was 25, my step dad finally in 2022 and my biological father just last year. I'm 40.
I never knew my grandparents. My aunts and uncles all passed over 15 years ago. When my mother died 10 years ago I looked at my siblings and said "we're the old people now" because there were no adults from our youth left alive.
🫂💕
staying fit and healthy takes effort.
when you're a kid, you're active. you heal fast.
when you're an adult, you are often sedentary, and injuries heal slowly. you have to work at it, either by choosing a lifestyle that facilitates it or by making time for it.
Pain.
You no longer don't feel pain. You just manage it.
Yeah.
It seems like an obvious answer, but pain is it. It's not like I didn't know old people experienced body pain when I was younger, it just isn't something you really have to think more deeply about. Once you actually get to the point where you've got one or more chronic injuries and you stop remembering what it's like to have a "normal" day, then you realize how little you had to take it into account when you were younger and how little you understood what it was really like.
And beyond the physical pain, it's just a huge bummer. You constantly have to manage medications, you have to constantly be careful not to do something to make it worse, you have to cancel weekend plans if things go south or stop doing certain things altogether.
Being in constant pain literally changes your personality. You get angrier. More depressed. You lash out at those closest to you.
That was what I was going to comment. If you don't stay JUST AS ACTIVE as you did when you were younger, you just ache. Getting up wrong is a thing. Sitting wrong is a thing. Existing can cause pain.
It's weird and miserable. Luckily there's distractions enough.
YUP! Oh, you want to do an activity, any activity, you enjoy? Look forward to two-to-six weeks of a random body part being in pain from it.
I'm jumping on this to say that there's a good amount of this pain that you can preemptively avoid by taking care of yourself while you're younger.
Not everything. As you get older your body is stepping closer to the end of its lifespan. But if you don't manage your fat/muscles/tendons/etc, you shouldn't be as surprised when you suddenly find yourselves with bad knees that hurt if you ever try to get active again (that's me!).
If you're young: plan.
If you're old: don't give up. Just try your best to get as much quality of life back as you can, so the last few years of your life aren't spent in a hospital or assistive living facility/nursing home/etc.
Unfortunately the nature of my employment did not allow me that opportunity.
How old? I am rapidly nearing 60 and have considerably less pain than when younger because the migraines have nearly vanished and I do yoga instead of running. No chronic pain yet.
Perhaps having negative expectations helped as well, I was sure by now I'd have osteoporosis from early eating disorder, pain in joints from years of ballet, none of these shoes have dropped yet. I do feel weaker than my 40s which were my peak but not weaker than my 30s. And so, so much less pain with fewer migraines.
Things change gradually and at some point you just realize they're gone. I am in pretty good shape, but injuries that used to heal quickly just linger now. I love to go out for drinks, but hangovers just hit so much harder now. I am basically in for two and will regret a third. I might actually be close to one then just soft drinks. I don't feel any different in my mind, but I have to accept that the machine can't keep up.
Slowly, all the ppl whose wisdom and advice you've relied upon your entire life disappear or die. Go be with them before they're gone.
Something will wear out eventually. Once it wears out it will become surprisingly easy to injure.
Rapid aging happens like growth spurts. Around 40-44 apparently again around 65. Small print becomes a problem, body does not handle alcohol as before, body aches and pains become constant. Exercise is essential, but a setback from an injury or sedentary lifestyle is difficult to escape from.
Amen. And if you don't get enough sleep, you don't look "cute" anymore.
You look like absolute shit.
I have heard this as well. Hitting 42 this year and feeling less youthful than I did in years past...
Watching my little babies run around the house as big kids is crushing the fuck out of my heart. I love them and they're all healthy and happy and that's great but holy fuck its going so fast and they're gonna leave me and idk what I'm gonna do. Brutal shit.
It may get worse. My 3 have all grown up, graduated college and been quite successful. Unfortunately that success has led to job opportunities spread across the country... Oregon, Maine and Arkansas. Having them all gone and so far away is really, really hard. They are doing so well and I talk to them often, but I miss seeing them face-to-face and it's rare to have them all together. It makes me very sad even though I'm happy for them.
I'm in the same boat, and it's a mixed bag. When they were little I used to yearn for some time alone to do my own thing, and now that I have it I want nothing more than for them to be climbing all over me again.
At least you and I have each other ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ
Holy fuck those hormones are a source of unbelievable energy and getting to that feeling you get naturally in your 20s and part of your 30s takes a lot more effort.
Everyday, there’s always a problem to fix. Every fucking day. It can be something in the house that breaks suddenly. Or someone gets sick. Or a pebble causes a crack on your windshield. Or your internet service suddenly jacked up their rates and you have to call to threaten disconnection to bring it down again. Everyday. You can’t go a day without something to do or fix.
Spending so much time going to medical appointments.
Spending so much time
going toIN THE WAITING ROOM for medical appointments.FTFY
Doctors are always on their own schedule.
Prioritize your health. Living on energy drinks and pizza's looks fine in your twenties but then you head towards your fourties and you take meds for things like hypertension and fight a neverending war against your waist size.
Your body starts breaking down long before you’re ready or expected, despite every warning you heard your whole life.
The constant sex, the extra money, the sudden inclination to dunk at basketball, watching your dick get larger, hair getting more vibrant, skin getting fuller, the daily blowjobs, the endless promotions, fast cars, things getting cheaper and more affordable, watching your parents benchpressing monster trucks...
So you're a bottom on Grinder?
You had all those things?!#!? I'm totes jells!
The weight of the evil of the world never eases, only becomes more intense
Young people getting dumber.
A global pandemic into a sustained recession and silent great depression will derail all the outcomes you'd built momentum towards in earlier life. You will never really fully recover. Whatever you do gain back will be a shadow of what was going to be.
So try to plan ahead for that, Kiddo.
It's the curse of time that the elder generation only has life lessons for what they went through and the younger generation will live through new things that no one had even imagined possible. So every generation has to figure it out for themselves. Our parents educate us for a world that will not exist when we grow up.
Sounds wise, but that's a cop out though. The general lessons are almost always universal. Don't stockpile vaccines for the omicron variant of covid, sure - that won't occur again as viruses evolve, but...
ETC, ETC, ETC.
Nobody serious prepares their children for the exact scenarios they saw, they generalize what's valuable and then finish by teaching them to be ready to realize that you may be in an entirely different situation, and that will be scary, but if you slow down, you'll realize that there's likely plenty you can take from my experience for helpful shortcuts.
People really don't give a fuck about you when your mental illness hangups are fucking with you, and you legitimately can't hang.
I don't think it's because people don't care, but it's more that the older you get the more you realize how everyone has baggage and we each have to deal with our own. So not that others don't care, but more that everyone is dealing with something hard and traumatic, and trying not to burden others with it.
I love gen z for how empathetic they are, but I'll be curious to see if it continues through to adulthood.
Recent new hire was "sharing" whatever mental thing he has... At work.
Dude, no need to air your laundry at work - we all got shit to get done and that's not helping. We ALL got shit in our heads, no need to burden anyone else with my shit when they got their own.
Right? Work is not the place for it. If you need a mental health day, take a mental health day. You do what you need to, but I'm here just trying to get through the day.
I've been struggling with a loss recently personally, and took a couple days off for it. My boss knew and approved, but I'm not going to drop that on my coworkers. They have their own stresses and drama, they have their own personal demons they need to work on. Last thing they need is me sadly dumping on them. Friends are friends, coworkers are not.
It really sucks having young people getting on your lawn.
Unironically?
I mean, it's a surface designed to be walkable. Wait until someone drives on it.
Unironically I do get mad at kids (or anyone) on my lawn in the fall when we're trying to seed it. The rest of the year I couldn't give a fuck, but there's a 3 week stretch where I water the grass twice a day to get the grasslings to grow and people walking on them ruins all that effort. And before anyone comes at me for a monoculture grass lawn, we only do it because our trial of "let it do what it wants" ended in weeds taking over that die in the fall, leaving the yard all dirt, and causing massive erosion when it rained in winter. We literally had to shovel dirt out of our driveway. Our huge back yard is still a sanctuary for bugs and wildlife with native plants and such, but the front yard gets watched over like it's in an HOA because of the headache we had when we let the weeds and native plants win.
So yeah, darn kids better stay off my lawn in late September/early October!
You're getting tired. When you ride your bicycle, it always goes uphill, even when in fact you're going downhill. And the older you grow, the steeper it gets.
when you hit about 45, your mental age is currentAge-20 years-ish but doing an activity associated with mental age can come with some surprising consequences, mostly unhappy surprises at that. But as you continue to age you start accepting who are and start making less stupid choices that are associated with how you mentally feel.
There's more of the past and less of the future.
Realizing that I what I know is that I know nothing.
This is where learning really starts in my opinion.
Allegedly.
Your life isn't going to get better. Those old "It gets better." campaigns used to seriously piss me off. You are a slave to crapitalism until you die
I've got good news for you!
That about seems like the age you start truly internalizing "Lol all these things they told me were important, aren't. And I don't care lol."
We have to spend so much time in that state of dissonance, deprogramming ourselves, realizing their best interests are not in ours.
So dementia sets in around 42??!???!
I've got good news for you!
I mean, redraw this graph as "happiness" vs "year of birth" and it'll look way less optimistic!
Thank you. This actually does help.
...huh. That's kinda exciting, but I'm curious if that's still accurate.
...then again, I'm also hanging out at the bottom right now :p
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/national-institute-economic-review/article/happiness-and-ageresolving-the-debate/7E765E7E32A488E1FF5EE735039DD6C0
I think I'm mapping the negations of negations correctly - that link says not only is it still current, but seems to be very nearly universal?
Correct
My life got better as I got older, but I don't live in the States, so maybe that's a factor.
Bold of you to assume it's going to stop after I die, fully expect to be reanimated and used as cheap labour at this rate.
Oof, bleak. I hope altered carbon doesn't become a reality. Decent show though
That you can't get back wasted or lost time.
When you're young you vow to yourself not to change which as it turns out isn't that hard. Trouble is the world changes around you. Then you find yourself shaking your fist at the clouds and realize you sound like your parents
retirement age keeps getting higher and healthy living does not necessarily. I have seen people get bad as early as 50's and 60's is typical to have things. few can go through 70's in very good health. Unfortunately most old people that people know are the healthy ones who get out and about more often and I think it kinda slants it.
Perimenopause. Sheesh, warn a girl! (And her significant other).
Your body has a slow self destruct mechanism embedded in it and it starts ticking in middle age. Your body doesn't get broken down because it's old, it's broken down because it's programmed to do so.
goddamn telomeres at it again (or not)
Most people in their 40s are concerned about their plans for retirement are on track when they should be worried about their telomerase.
Joints and back start hurting, especially if you did very physical work while younger
The kids are harder to keep up with
Eyes
I like to play it, but I sure don't like the racket.
I'm 60. At age 45 I decided to make staying healthy a priority and started learning to take better care of myself. I've avoided the aches and pains others report for the most part.
Most everything else said here tracks for me, though.
When things seem less than ideal, I remind myself that there's only one alternative to growing old, and I go out for a walk.
What steps did you take? I got a gym membership and go 4-5 days a week and cook at home now instead of fast food/take out.
mental pain is silently being replaced by physical pain
The mental pain doesn't just go away, though.
Hemorrhoids
Having to either explain the reference or give up.
Some dreams or goals are just gonna be out of reach no matter what. Just start with what you have and work from there.
Discovering you suddenly have bags under your eyes.
Not healing from stuff as fast as you used to. Losing muscle mass faster and not being able to get it back.
naaa...i want to talk more about best parts of getting older.
Less tolerance for bullshit drama. you seen enough of it. It just doesnt evolve.
Like learning to shift your time better. not waste so much of it like when you're young. especially on dumb drama. and if you learned well: you learned the parts you took in it and are accountable to the choices you make and get some control over your choices. like good people vs bad people to have in your life.
stay learning new things. It is good for the brain. get a hobby. play an instrument. learn to play your favorite songs. write a book about your life. You can always kick ass in life.
learn how to eat for nourishment. not just for pleasure. cook including both. then you can be even healthier than when you were young.
Move a lot more. Like a lot more. dont get used to just sitting on the couch. Couches can turn into a coffin. its fine to watch your shows for some of the day... just dont let the couch turn into a coffin under you. get walkin. especially if your job is sedantary. not enough time? wake half an hour earlier and walk. helps you fall asleep at night when you need to.
Less fear of death. You start seeing enough of it to get the idea. An acceptance. You can still be scared of the dying process though. especially dying with a lot of self imposed suffering like being catastrophically obese and unable to move. hoarding. being abandoned. abandoning yourself and not reaching out for help or doing something about mental health. letting yourself down on your own watch. but death itself is just more of a rebirth. The fear is that you lived too stupid/blaming everyone and holding no accountability and you dont want to have to do all of it all over again with the same amount of stupid. there is enough examples of how not to live. pay attention to that. you owe yourself on that.
You have to make life choices
Watching all of your heroes die.
I like to say that I'm in 'The Wonder Years.'
I wake up and wonder what the hell is going to crap out today.
Some experiences that your parents or church told you not to do, like drinking, drugs, finding a partner or being in a relationship, or even having sex are experiences that should be started when you're 18. It's like building a muscle: You have to try it to see if you like it, have a tolerance for it, and know what to do to recover from overdoing it or making a mistake.
Essentially, make mistakes when you're young, cause excuses get harder to make when you're in your 30s or 40s.
at least youngest gen z and younger than them, that being a YOUTUBER isnt all cracked up to be, ive heard many accounts how alot of them want to be only that, because "its easier to make money". unless you are rich and wealthy you can attempt to do that and you can afford to fail and do nothing and come up with new ideas, even the current older influencers are wealthy people. and you need staff, producers, original ideas,,,etc.
only the super old og yotbers are likely not coming from money(minus PPDIE). with that behind, msot of them tend to end up being shady or pos in real life eventually. job market, with AI screening out resumes, its harder to get a job now for certain stem degrees like CS and bio-tech(not health). and degrees that already had a bad time finding jobs, will be even more difficult.
Having to answer these questions.
Burned bridges
And failing to burn the right ones.
I would have to say sleep injuries and slowdown of body function.
I used to be a stomach sleeper and now my arms and hands go to sleep right away. If I lay on my side and don't have a pillow, whichever knee is on top will sag and hurts like a bitch for a day and a half afterward.
Body-function-wise, I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted and stay in shape, that is increasingly less true. To keep in shape I spend more time being hungry and also having to make better decisions about food; you don't just turn out a nice turd no matter what after about 33 and the alternatives are not great. Also alcohol is nowhere near as friendly as it used to be: if I have enough to drink that I get a buzz now, I will be sick the next day until like 2 in the afternoon.