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
Everyone can afford experiences. Experiences don’t have to be a trip abroad or jumping from hobby to hobby.
There are people with legitimate obstacles that prevent them from doing even the simplest enrichment activities, but exploring the world around you, asking questions about things you take for granted, seeing how long you can hold your breath, try a yoga pose, count your steps on the way to work and try estimating how many steps it will take you to go to the shop down the street… Opportunities for experiences are effectively unlimited.
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.
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.
Yeah, you realize how many “friends” were just acquaintances and disappear.
Happy cake day!
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 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.
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.”
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.
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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.
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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.
we still fuck every day and I get off at least once a day still.
Uh. I don’t know that that’s normal. You have my envy, though.
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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 …
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
Your body ages faster than your brain. Your brain says “go ahead, jump!” Your body says, “aw fuck!”
The future seems distant but the past is an instant. Your life seems like it went by in a flash.
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).
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
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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.
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.
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.
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You have to live with all the mistakes you’ve made your entire life.
Losing friends is probably up there.
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.
Well I’m guess I’m lucky that I don’t have friends.
work on that, if you can.
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.
Yup, a week is such a long time in school, I’m in my thirties and I see months go by so quickly
