121–130 of 194 posts
I still feel like the upstart who barely knows what he is doing. The only difference is the people around me. I used to be surrounded by people I looked up to, who seemed to know everything. But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent and they're acting like I am the established authority, which just shows how little they must know!
For example you see a lot of people today who grew up on the internet and are now into their 40s say "I'm too old for this, I shouldn't enjoy this as much" etc. The expectation to behave a certain way and what people really want creates a sort of mismatch.
And really it's kind of silly because when someone is 50 and says they feel like they're 35 that's probably because there's really not that much of a difference. Their brain just works all the same. The reverse is true as well I think. A lot of kids 'feel older' in their head than they are and that's probably just because they're not as different as we treat them. That we treat older and younger people like different species sometimes has always been weird to me.
Feels weird reading of all these same experiences. Since my childhood I always felt older than I was. Any body got a similar experience?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. I'm in my 40s and am ready for retirement, or at least a change of pace. My sweet little angelic children probably have a lot to do with it.
I wonder if parents view their age differently than those without children. Kids really aged me. I'm in my 40s but I feel like I am so ready to hang it up and retire. Sit on the front porch with a iPad and a pipe.
Maybe it helps that I don't live in a city but out in the woods on a farm? Discovery here entails tramping through the woods, digging up things, building stuff. Get a bunch of branches and build a "stone-age home", why not? A swing on a rope between two trees or hang up a hammock there and see how high you can make it swing (answer: very). As long as my body plays along - and it better do so or I'll get mighty angry with it - I expect to feel more or less ageless, neither young nor old. If it starts to fail me I'll probably change my mind but for now I simply don't bother with the concept of 'age' - going so far as to have to think about how old I actually am, something which trips up my children every time age is mentioned. It is just a number, something like those vague values seen in a S.M.A.R.T. report telling you about the health of a drive:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 116 099 006
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. Once I started seriously considering retirement, admittedly a bit early-ish relative to the usual 65-70, the internal mental model of self has started to shift pretty dramatically, and the hypothetical "I have a lot of things i want to do" plans for the future now have the annotation "and a lot of them need to be done while I am still relatively young enough for them to be plausible." That has honestly shifted…
"I have a lot of things i want to do and a lot of them need to be done while I am still relatively young enough for them to be plausible." Do those things that are 'on your list' as soon as possible. There is an old saying 'Life is what happens while you're making other plans'. I discovered that I had, in practice, a mere six (6!) years in retrospect where it was possible do do things that were 'on MY list. If you mi…
I've felt about 22 for decades. Probably until my mid forties, I felt I was only about 19. That leads quite often to the situation where you are looking in shock at some elderly, bald person in the mirror while thinking "Who's that old bastard?". Or the sudden realisation "My God! I'm only two and a bit years off 80!" As the article says, there's a difference between the age you feel you are 'in your head' and the ag…
Categorising ideas as age specific makes sense. We think differently as we get older, our mind is slower, our ideas change. Categorising the body according to how 'old' it is or feels or looks also makes sense. Categorising consciousness in the same way makes no sense at all, consciousness feels the same from as soon as you are aware of it until the moment you are unaware of it (usually death). The confusion often ar…
Actually turning 80 caused a mental shift. I'd be doing something and think, wait, should an 80-year-old be doing this? Something about the number made my mental age repeatedly try to re-align with the physical. The effect lasted a few days then faded.
Yeah, I'm 80 and feel about 40. I'm a little slower, that's all. Sometimes, I'll be walking past a shop window and say, "Who's that old dude?"
So you're clearly doing a lot right.
I still feel like the upstart who barely knows what he is doing. The only difference is the people around me. I used to be surrounded by people I looked up to, who seemed to know everything. But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent and they're acting like I am the established authority, which just shows how little they must know!
Actually turning 80 caused a mental shift. I'd be doing something and think, wait, should an 80-year-old be doing this? Something about the number made my mental age repeatedly try to re-align with the physical. The effect lasted a few days then faded.
Yeah, I'm 80 and feel about 40. I'm a little slower, that's all. Sometimes, I'll be walking past a shop window and say, "Who's that old dude?"