Earlier quoted context omitted.
> with front and rear RockShox or better If you're only biking on the road I wouldn't get that, only slows you down. >(I use no helmet, because I'm trained to fall properly, but I recommend to wear helmet until you fall at least 10 times.). Not sure if you're serious...
I used to work with someone who was an avid cyclist, in his mid 50s, and insisted you didn't need a helmet when cycling because 'if you think about it, when you're falling, you will use your hands to stop yourself - so all you really need is a decent pair of gloves'. He was totally serious, and I assume the previous poster might also be. It's a slightly bizarre viewpoint, but not that dissimilar - this idea that you…
Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?
481–490 of 890 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?
#482Reading through the comments, does it feel like they have no idea what you're going through or where you're coming from? If so, let me tell you what worked for me. None of these comments ever works without having someone around you that you can reality test with. You need to find a partner in life. You need to get married. And no, a live-in partner won't do. That is it. There is no other solutions for you. Meetups, h…
Sure, marriage can bring lots of purpose and meaning to your life. It may even 'fix' you, for a time. However, it can also bring devastation. Being betrayed by who I felt was my partner in life nearly destroyed me, and years later I'm still struggling to find my footing.
Relying on union with another person is not, in my eyes, a viable solution for the long term. At best, you're punting the internal work that's truly called for down the road to another day.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?
#483Kinda amusing to see someone complaining about not having achieved anything despite this.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?
#484Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to _have_ a family. But it helps to find one.
Can you add a bit more about how this works?
What I mean is -- you do not need to have a partner and your own kids. There are all sorts of families (macro and micro) out there that can benefit from us.
On the micro side: you can allow yourself to be included in your best friend's family, you can allow friends to become close enough that you know they'd be there if you were sick and vice versa. You can think about lonely older people who you feel kinship for and be brave enough to offer them support. You can sometimes convert former romantic relationships into trusted friendships, and you can widen your romantic ideals to include joining a single-parent family that already exists.
One step up: you can treat your wider friendship circle like a family, believe in them like you would your family.
On the macro side of things: you can join a community and allow yourself to be absorbed into it as someone of significance; you can help people find their people. Introduce people to other people; be the reason other people have people.
All of these things require a kind of bravery that deserts most of us at some time, and obviously a kind of comfort with other people that not all of us find easy at all, but really any step you make to try to build a "family" is better than no step.
When you're young you don't need it and you forget to look for it, because new experiences outweigh family ties. When you're old you need it and it is harder to find.
When you're 35... this is the time to enjoy the thrill of being brave and seeking real connections with a mature mind, and allow yourself to think of it as building family and significance into your life.
I managed some of this -- a real social life, real connections -- for a long time from the age of 33[0], and then the pandemic has undone a lot of that; people have scattered. And if all of the above sounds preachy and patronising it is because it's really all I think about again -- how do I get that back, at the age I am now?
[0] "Lord, to be 33 forever"
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plus one in health and physical fitness. Buying a bicycle and using it daily was probably the best investment I ever made in myself. Also, I can't believe that I smoked those filthy cigarretes for so long, but how good is that I stopped this habit. About material realizations please remind that the average successful enterpreneur age is about 45. I only started being able to save serious, retirement-style money when…
Which bike did you buy?
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?
#487I turned 40 recently, and it hit me like a tonne of bricks. My relationship had just ended, my startup had gone on ice thanks to Covid, and the international move I'd just made reversed in the space of days (due to the break-up). The feeling of "what am I doing with my life?" hit hard, I'd already been doing therapy for a while, but the lack of fulfilment and satisfaction is still there. Technology bores me mostly, e…
If you get bored by technology but want to give it another shot, see if you can find meaning around making it work for and with other people. Perhaps you have an offline community that could benefit from some kind of automation, like generating tax receipts from a PDF template or organizing their resources and processes in a way (website?) that's useful for members. Perhaps you're passionate about user freedoms, you…
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?
#488So, my advice would be to explore religion and see if it starts having a positive effect on your sense of purpose in life. Even if you pick a "wrong" religion, I think God can still work with that and help you understand your purpose vs. no religion. IMO, just like software, religious/spiritual belief is an incremental process.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?
#489> I feel like I haven't achieved much, both personally and professionally
> I am single and haven't had a serious relationship for many years now.
> As time went on, I started feeling less excited about everything, personal or work related
> I feel like my time for everything is running out.
Nobody is going to be able to untangle all these in a comment, so it wouldn't be fair to try. I'll give one suggestion. Find someone who is qualified and willing to help you untangle all this.
Would that be a friend? A relative? No, or it would've happened by now. So who? A good therapist :)
If you can get past the judgement a lot of people who've never seen a therapist have, I think you'll find it very helpful. You have the money and if a therapist is not helpful after you've tried a few different ones, then at least you can cross it off your potential solutions list.
This isn't an uncommon or unique set of thoughts to have by the way. That cult movie Fight Club is all about it. Its solution was to drop down to being violent apes. A solution I lean towards is moving up to being a conscious human being :)
Good luck on your journey.