[HN Gopher] The gap between how old you are and how old you thin...
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The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 122 points
Date : 2023-02-24 06:59 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| thunderbong wrote:
| "The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is
| still young"
|
| - Oscar Wilde
| Sai_ wrote:
| Someone should invent an Oscar Wilde quote generator like they
| did for Deepak Chopra. I've been guilty of using OW's quotes
| but does the format have to be so predictable?
|
| "The <$5 word for an emotion> with/of <noun> is not that it
| <does a banal thing> but that <slightly offbeat insight>".
|
| 1. The surprising thing about rain is not that it falls during
| your parade but that it never does when you have to attend
| someone else's.
|
| 2. Some people read books to educate themselves, others to
| subjugate others.
|
| 3. I have nothing to declare but I'm too much of a genius to
| just "No" when asked.
|
| How did I do?
| uonpopular_th wrote:
| 1 and 2 are great, 3 isn't.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I'm in my 40s and I still automatically get out of the public
| pool when they blow the whistle.
| neilk wrote:
| 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!
| ordu wrote:
| I think the article gives us a very shallow take on a problem.
| The first question should be "what is an age perception". The
| article even calls this perception a bizarre thing (and I agree),
| but then it throws the question out of the window.
|
| Why people think it is a good idea to learn how to guess age? I
| think, it is because we need to guess age of others to fine tune
| our communication skills. If it is so, then probably we apply
| this very guessing abilities to ourselves and get the wrong
| answer. Which is not very surprising: we see ourselves
| differently, we see ourselves from the inside, so skills learned
| for measuring others do not do a great job.
|
| So there are some traits, that can be measured based on our
| appearance and behavior, that are used to predict age, but they
| looks completely different from the inside. What are they?
| [deleted]
| ericol wrote:
| What's news, pussycat.
|
| If we talk about how I feel, I think I'll be forever 30; that was
| around the time in my life when I had the most friends,
| experienced the most, traveled the most and had the most fun.
|
| But then, last year I turned 50, and the realization that I have
| a lot more behind me than ahead is a thought that lives rent free
| in my mind now.
| JALTU wrote:
| And for me, the rent ahead is not so "free!" Making money was
| ego and self-discovery when young. It's all-too-practical now
| with a degree of urgency I'd not ever felt before.
| majkinetor wrote:
| I don't feel age. I don't care. 20 or 80, its all the same to me.
| electric_mayhem wrote:
| A mentor told me that he felt like he was about twenty until
| after his first heart attack and bypass surgery.
|
| After that, he said, he felt like he had aged a ton.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I'm 35. Really the only time I feel older than 20 is when I'm
| hungover. Never really got hangovers until I was in my late 20s
| euroderf wrote:
| George Bernard Shaw: "Youth is wasted on the young."
| globalise83 wrote:
| I am in the interesting position of being close to 40 and only
| just in the past year becoming able to grow a proper beard. So, I
| consider myself a slightly cleaner-living 18 year old.
| irrational wrote:
| After I turned 50 I mentioned to my Mom that I still felt like I
| was in my early 20s. She said she felt the exact same way,
| despite being in her 70s. That was the first time I realized that
| the discrepancy between how old you are and how old you think you
| are might be universal.
|
| It also made me wonder if this might be why surveys show that in
| general men prefer women who are in their early 20s. Perhaps men
| are basing it off of how old they feel (so they are the same age
| as the women they are seeking) rather than how old they are. Of
| course, the same surveys show that in general women prefer men
| near their own actual age. Perhaps women base it off of how old
| they are rather than how old the think they are. I have no idea
| if the above has any basis in reality. It's just a "I wonder..."
| Hyption wrote:
| [flagged]
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I would assume it's more of a biology thing because women under
| 30 are more fertile. We evolved to prefer those markers that
| signify that age.
|
| Of course not all men have this preference etc etc
| gabereiser wrote:
| I completely agree but I also think it's a little bit of
| _ugg_. Have you seen the people 40+ on dating apps or online?
| It's definitely a flea market.
| JALTU wrote:
| I wonder if others here found their mental age aging more rapidly
| after certain life events?
|
| The wake of aging parents transitioning (death, stroke/care home)
| has without doubt accelerated my mental age, which in turn has
| changed what I'd call my horizon. When younger and prior to said
| events, the horizon was far away; time enough for
| everything/anything. Not so much anymore, much greater sense of
| uncertainty.
| wiredfool wrote:
| My dad subjectively aged about 10 years when my sister died in
| her 30's. It was like a switch from Adultish to Elderly.
| tilsammans wrote:
| Yes, absolutely. I've felt 22-ish for most of my adult life,
| until midlife happened. That was a couple years ago, and I'm in
| the tail end of my midlife "crisis". Right now, at 47, I feel
| my age. Also, I'm totally okay with it.
|
| Midlife crisis definitely happened for me, and might actually
| have been my internal age adjusting to my external one.
|
| Makes me wonder if I'll feel 47 for the rest of my life...
| incanus77 wrote:
| Feels so for me. I'm nearing 46, and all through my 30s I felt
| (and was told) that I seemed younger. My wife passed from
| cancer when I was 39 and I feel like all that time caught up to
| me in the next year or so. Now I feel (and I think, look) age-
| appropriate, have begun to definitely feel the aging. However,
| I've also made more serious efforts towards good nutrition and
| exercise and am feeling much healthier than other periods of my
| life. But mentally, I'm incredibly presently aware of every day
| and how uncertain any future days with anyone, let alone
| myself, actually are.
| nerdface wrote:
| Sorry for your loss
| lisper wrote:
| Yep. I'm going through the exact same thing with the exact same
| results.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I agree. I felt like a "kid" throughout college and the first
| few years after, but then I moved away from my college friends
| and felt like a 20-something.
|
| I felt like a 20-something until my late 30s when I had
| children. When my third kid came, I felt like I skipped my 30s
| and turned 40... right before my 40th birthday.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I feel that after kid was born. Chronic sleep deprivation and
| depression are the reasons. Not sure when will nd hopefully not
| too long.
| tenpies wrote:
| I found depression to be a two-edged sword in the aging
| department.
|
| Mentally, I felt older, "an old soul". But physically, not
| having the energy to do anything, sleeping almost in excess,
| not going outside, not laughing or smiling . . . they all
| seem to have kept my body younger.
| korroziya wrote:
| I figured this was going to be more about the Zoomers in their
| twenties who act like perpetual high school students. Did not
| expect to see the discrepancy between people with and without
| kids.
| setheron wrote:
| Does anyone ever feel older in their head than their body after
| their 20s?
| flangola7 wrote:
| I've felt 45 since I was 15. I'm 39. No kids, still living the
| single college (but without college) life. A little chronic
| physical illness and a lot of mental illness.
|
| It's nice to finally say "Oh I don't know if I have it in me to
| do that today." and have people actually accept your answer. I
| don't miss youth because I never experienced it. Would have
| killed myself long ago but I never worked up the willpower to
| even achieve that (also no guns or high cliffs in my country -
| when you start researching it you find it's surprisingly hard
| to reliably end a life without suffering). I'm finally finding
| life slightly enjoyable for once being an old fart.
|
| I tutor a handful of teenage Gen Z kids and it's unnerving how
| much I can relate to them. Neither of us expect to have much of
| a future - for me it was my medical issues and suicidal
| thoughts, but for them it's the outside world they're going
| into. Two of my brightest students have said they don't expect
| to make it to 40 and if they do life will be much much harder.
| They're healthy, happy, mentally well - but with both political
| and literal climate going the way they are they can't see
| humanity realistically making it that far without some kind of
| mass war, famine, genocide, not to even mention untold horrors
| AI will usher in.
| [deleted]
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| feeling older than your body's age in calendar years is a
| symptom of ptsd (not in every case)
|
| (yes I feel older and yes in my case it is a symptom of ptsd)
| uonpopular_th wrote:
| I've been 50 since I was 12. I wonder what will happen when my
| body catches up with my age.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Yes. I've long felt time pressure. It wasn't until I was thirty
| and finally working in the career I'd wanted to work in since I
| was about 10 or so that I felt just 30. And my mid 20s were a
| time when my body was in the best shape of my life; but I still
| felt as if time was passing too swiftly.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm 59, and I've noticed cognitive changes as I've gotten
| older. Perhaps the biggest ones are: 1) How much distraction
| and interruption I can tolerate before I lose my flow. 2) How
| long it takes to get back into flow when picking up something I
| worked on months or years ago.
|
| I was going to add 3) How long it takes to find something on my
| computer, but that might be a function of adding more stuff and
| never getting rid of anything. I don't think I was _more_
| organized as a kid, just there was less stuff to organize.
|
| In terms of things like social attitudes, having kids go
| through high school and college age was a big "reset" button,
| because I kind of observed the world through their eyes and
| listened to their arguments. They're the ones who have to live
| with this ** after all.
| mjklin wrote:
| The writer David Rakoff of This American Life fame said that he
| felt 47 ever since his 20s. Coincidentally, he died at 47 from
| cancer.
| justinator wrote:
| I lost my parents at age 20, and instantly felt 30 for the next
| 10 years- and the next 10 years after that.
|
| One of the silver linings of losing parents so young is getting
| a genuine interest to not have that happen to you, so I've made
| my health a pretty important part of my life - enough so that
| _I_ won 't die in my 50's unless a freak accident happens. My
| body could be misplaced for a 30 year old, even if my face
| looks 40.
| greesil wrote:
| 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.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Hah so I'm not alone!
|
| Until 5 years ago every moment was spent on some sort of
| hobby or interest. I could not begin to comprehend those
| people who would finish their day aNd then conk out in front
| of tv.
|
| Now... It's a special night if we have enough energy for tv
| once kids are in bed :->
| greesil wrote:
| I miss having hobbies. Any side project I embark upon has
| an immediate cost to my marriage. As in my partner gets mad
| at me because I should be helping deal with the little
| ones.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I bought a steam deck. It's not a joke that I can tweak
| settings on it all day, but within 10 seconds of
| launching a game I want to play, my wife shouts my name,
| the baby starts crying, or the 4 year old trips and
| falls. At least my favorite technical achievement of the
| deck is its reliable suspend button.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Actually, Steam Deck _is_ a real life-saver. The ability
| to play games 3 minutes at a time, anywhere, cannot be
| overstated (or explained to those living a more
| predictable, free life :). And games like e.g.
| "Steamworld Dig 2" or "Jack Moves" can similarly be
| picked up without needing 15 minutes to "get into the
| groove" or "drive to next mission" etc.
|
| (I've also enjoyed Outer Wilds more on SteamDeck than any
| other device, for whatever reason; similarly, I can't
| make myself play Cyberpunk 2077 on 8" screen with fan
| redlining, even though apparently many do!:)
| boomerango wrote:
| Home improvement catch 22 - damned if the drywall goes
| unpatched, damned if I spend an hour driving to the
| hardware store and fixing it, away from the kids.
| caleblloyd wrote:
| I never thought we would fight over who gets to mow the
| lawn. An hour of peace during the daytime!
| vidanay wrote:
| Ha! I have a rather large property, and I thoroughly
| enjoy putting on my headphones and hopping on the riding
| mower for three hours on a Saturday afternoon.
| jakzurr wrote:
| Not to worry - both of my parents perked up quite a bit after
| my 5 sibs and I were past our teens. It was fun to watch!
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| 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.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I'm 36 and feel the same way. I already have a pacemaker
| too, though.
| usrusr wrote:
| There's also the reverse effect, with aging childless
| observing their parenting age-peers go through a "third
| person youth experience" they don't have themselves.
| [deleted]
| RHSman2 wrote:
| I am most freaked out that you said iPad!
| ycquestion wrote:
| I have no kids and I feel very weird about my age. I am
| about to turn 40 and feel 30 and 60 at the same time. I
| think of myself as 30, but really feel like 60. I have
| little energy left after a day at work or even on the
| weekends. I cannot consistently put energy behind any
| effort. I used to hack on my side projects before and after
| work. Now it's a great success if I do it 2-3 hours/month.
| I feel my mental state declining and worry that I won't be
| able to get another job ever again. When I say "mental
| state" I mean capability, energy and maybe even sanity. I
| think too much about unknowable things like sentients,
| nature of reality, purpose of life and sometimes wonder if
| reality is real and it demotivates me. Life feels on rails,
| like a movie playing in front of me, more than anything I
| can interact with. I feel like a passenger. Maybe it's just
| a result of depression and not old age.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| As some who deals with depressive episodes, this sounds
| familiar. You might want to look into seeing someone. I'd
| go with therapy before trying medication.
|
| There are so many possible sources for depression, so I
| can't possibly give any specific, actionable advice. Just
| remember, you don't need to settle for how things are
| now.
|
| Good luck, hope things turn around. :)
| johnrob wrote:
| Only upon reading your comment a second time did I
| realize you said "no kids". What you wrote after sounds
| _exactly_ what life can feel like for an ambitious hacker
| (side projects!) confronted with the massive quantity of
| household work that young children bring about. Passenger
| is a word I use a lot - my mind hasn't changed from
| before kids, but at times it feels like I'm just on the
| sidelines watching everyone else do stuff, while I change
| diapers and wash dishes.
|
| I'm not anyone to be giving out psychological advice -
| but given my high "overhead of life" I've found it a
| convenient time to focus on physical health. I just need
| 30 minutes a day for exercise, and then it's just a
| matter of eating healthy. Kids may take my time but they
| can't force junk food down my throat! My time will free
| up down the road - and I think your "muse" will also
| return with time. Which is why I figure now is a great
| time to instead focus on health (low opportunity cost wrt
| side projects). You may as well start with that, and if
| we believe a lot of what's written these days, it's
| entirely possible that improved diet and exercise might
| clear and focus your mind too (that would be house money
| if so). But at least when your drive returns, hopefully
| the new healthy habits you've gained will stick.
|
| Last thought - if you can't think of anything else
| interesting to work on, I'd recommend blogging about a
| subject matter you find interesting. Just my 2 cents.
| RHSman2 wrote:
| I felt I had my first life crisis at 27. I felt older and that
| I should be doing less silly things. That led me to doing what
| I wanted as I couldn't bare a life like that. P.s 46 now and
| coming into my 2nd adolescence
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I was 55, and I felt maybe 30 or 40. Then I pulled a hamstring.
| I felt about 80 for the next few weeks, because walking was so
| much slower and more painful.
|
| Yeah, I know, it's just an temporary thing, but while it lasted
| it really did shift my perception of my age.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I feel way older than I actually am, but I spend much of my
| life being manic. Mania has a way of accelerating life. Once I
| got diagnosed and treated, everything slowed down.
|
| My mind and body feel like I'm in my fifties and I'm in my mid
| thirties. It feels like I have more life experience than most
| of the people my age.
|
| On the other hand, a friend and I were walking along a frozen
| river throwing snowballs just to hear them splat on the ice.
| Neither of us will ever grow out of that. We have no shame in
| taking joy in simple things. We're responsible, mature adults
| where we need to be. :)
| xyzelement wrote:
| I think this is just the aftermath (and also, ongoing) of boomer
| culture. Before that generation, you generally had kids in your
| late 20s and grandkids in your 50s. If you were 80, you were a
| great grandparent. All these titles conveyed an age. By the time
| you were those ages, you acted that age.
|
| Boomers I think invented the 40 is the new 30 and 70 is the new
| 50 nonsense, so of course they are confused about what age they
| are. It's easy to "feel 20" when you haven't taken on the
| appropriate responsibility.
|
| I am an example of that. I am 41, only married 3 years, to a
| younger woman and we have a baby and a toddler. Just bought a
| house etc. Very easy to feel young with all that, but the reality
| is I am more like "late to the party" - this all should have
| happened 10-14 years ago. I'd feel "older" if my kid was going
| into highschool rather than pre-school right now.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Just so you know, "haven't taken on the appropriate
| responsibility" really sounds like you are judging people whose
| life choices differ from yours. Nobody has a responsibility to
| procreate.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I am talking about responsibility as in being responsible for
| people (spouse, kids, grandkids in this case.) It's easier to
| "feel young" when you don't have that.
| RHSman2 wrote:
| Tendons.
|
| Once beautiful, stretchy creatures that probably now resemble a
| curmudgeon being asked to be nice to a neighbor.
|
| Been playing soccer with my soccer mad 8 yr old. I too was that
| guy. Brings me back and I am so much better at technique now but
| boy oh boy does my hip and lower back hurt the next day!!!
| dehrmann wrote:
| > lower back hurt the next day
|
| "Next day" makes me think it's just DOMS.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is a funny Dutch song called 'you're getting older dad'
| that has this passage in it:
|
| "I'm still winning at pong, but it costs him little trouble and
| me more and more..."
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| This does not feel surprising to me. I think you mentally lock
| into the age where you really bloomed into your adult self. For
| many, that is their early 20s. For me, it is around 30 (I am in
| my 50s).
|
| And then that perceived age very slowly drifts up, but still with
| considerable lag to "real" age.
| jacquesm wrote:
| "Inside every old person is a young person that wonders what the
| fuck happened".
| dehrmann wrote:
| When we're young, the world is full of opportunities. As we get
| older, the doors to those opportunities close, and fewer things
| seem possible.
| uonpopular_th wrote:
| Not really. There's just as many opportunities in every age,
| it's just that you've been burned enough times to realize
| that the majority of opportunities are nothing of the sort.
| homarp wrote:
| as illustrated by TikTok "teenage filter" -
| https://mobile.twitter.com/memotv/status/1628758590033993728
| thriftwy wrote:
| I never had any problem with my age, but.
|
| This year I've turned 38 and for some reason this number stopped
| being funny. I know a lot people make a fuss about turning 40,
| but for me the transition happened to be 38.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| "I'm a 30 year old boy.."
| simonblack wrote:
| 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 age you feel you are 'in your
| body'. This also is rather annoying as your 'head' feels you can
| knock over a job completely in an hour or two but when you start
| doing it, your 'body' lets you down and and you find yourself
| exhausted about four hours later and stop working, only about a
| quarter-way through the job.
| crdrost wrote:
| Jukebox the Ghost in 2012, In my lungs I
| still feel young But my body won't play along
| I'm thinking this must not be where we Belong.
|
| Alan Kay was talking somewhere, but I don't have the link,
| about how a lot of his success in his youth had to do with the
| research community around him, and I think he was asked a
| question about how that sort of thing changes as you grow
| older... He replied that the combination of growing older and
| not having that generous funding for whatever experiments they
| wanted to do and the dynamic research community, meant that he
| had to stop looking for validation at the "quality of my
| results" and instead had to feel pride at the "quality of my
| effort." Something I have kept in mind.
|
| The other thing I will say is that I am getting to an age where
| a lot of people really get set in their ways, and I am noticing
| that I am not. Like on a recent project I was trying to get
| team buy-in to move from Java to Kotlin, and the people who
| were super excited about it were 5-10 years younger and the
| people who were like "but why" were my generation and carried
| the day. I told this struggle to my wife and she attributed it
| to neurodivergence, she thinks I might have a mild or high-
| functioning ADHD that essentially gives me perpetual mid-to-
| late 20s enthusiasm with sime mild drawbacks (difficulty
| "cleaning as I go" when cooking for example, not handling the
| taxes until April when it becomes urgent, that sort of thing).
| rudasn wrote:
| > [...] he had to stop looking for validation at the "quality
| of my results" and instead had to feel pride at the "quality
| of my effort." Something I have kept in mind.
|
| Along the same lines, is the realisation that we tend to
| judge (?) others by the outcome of their efforts, but we
| judge ourselves by the outcome of our thoughts. I've read
| that somewhere, certainly more eloquently put, but it also
| stuck - esp. afrer having kids.
| nativeit wrote:
| Unless it's some other creative variation on the same
| theme, that sentiment is referring to what I learned in my
| college psych classes as the "Fundamental Attribution
| Error". Simply put, the fundamental attribution error says
| that part of our nature leads us to attribute more of our
| own behavior to being the result of a nuanced blend of
| circumstances and external influences, while the behavior
| of others gets more associated with who they are and the
| internal choices they made with little or no consideration
| to forces beyond their control.
|
| It intuitively makes sense that this is the case, and for
| some reason it really stuck with me (it's been 16-years
| since that class). Committing to working against this
| nearly universal implicit bias led me to being a more
| empathetic person over time.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Java to Kotlin
|
| Don't. I tried it, liked the language itself, but went back
| to Java.
|
| Kotlin's syntax is nice, but it predates Java 8, so that
| syntax plays poorly with the stream API and lambdas. Iterop
| works as-promised, but again, Kotlin syntax doesn't work well
| with libraries that are Java-first (in my case, this was
| Hadoop). Finally, mainline Java keeps cherry-picking the best
| new language features while learning from their mistakes.
| gnz11 wrote:
| In general (nothing against Kotlin) I think it probably has
| to do with the prospect of having to fiddle about and work
| late with new tech for the same outcome as what you would
| have gotten with the tried and true tech. At the end of the
| day, I want to spend my time with my friends and family and
| not burning the midnight hours on work tasks that could have
| been avoided.
| hellisothers wrote:
| This resonates but also essentially agrees w/the parent,
| the youth want to do what you just described for various
| reasons that benefit the youth, the older peeps didn't,
| because of similar motivations.
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| 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 arises
| in conflating consciousness with the body or the mind or both.
| foobiekr wrote:
| 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 the self-perception pretty
| dramatically. Or maybe I have the cause and effect reversed.
| simonblack wrote:
| _" 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 miss that window of
| opportunity, you 'll _never_ get to do _your list_ at all.
|
| You have to make to effort to fit them in while you can. One
| of my lifelong dreams was to spend a year or two in a small
| village in France. The first time it was a possibility was in
| 2003, but 'No, I have the responsibility to make us a living'
| meant that that chance was lost and so eight years went by -
| lost opportunity - until I finally made it to my village in
| France in 2011 but by then I could only spend time there in
| bits and pieces rather than as a single block of time.
|
| My "window of opportunity" closed at the end of 2016, though
| I wasn't aware of that fact till about 3 years later.
|
| Many times I have said to my wife, "If only we were 10 years
| younger, we could have ... bought an apartment in Paris ...
| or a house in Italy, or .......". Lost opportunities by the
| score.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| you can't know how it feels to be older than you are, you can
| only know how it looks. from that you're free to guess how it
| feels, but you're probably wrong.
|
| me, i've felt 9 since i was 9. it's actually kind of weird, i
| remember waking up on the morning of my ninth birthday, and
| that's where my episodic memory begins. i have earlier memories,
| but they're outside of time.
| pbj1968 wrote:
| I feel every one of my years. A relative in her 90s used to joke
| that if you asked her, she was still 15 or 16. So it goes.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| 15 or 16 feels strange. Maybe the war years, or shortly before?
| pbj1968 wrote:
| Nailed it.
| yawgmoth wrote:
| Curious how old other formerly closeted queer folks feel
| (particularly those who came out as adults). I have felt 30 since
| I hit puberty. I imagine it's from being hyper vigilant about
| policing my own behavior and body language.
| notahacker wrote:
| Think I've generally been 19 since the age of 19. Mostly to do
| with energy and uncertainty about life direction that has
| nothing to do with sexuality, but most friends my age have
| kids...
|
| In my earlier teens I might have been able to _sound_ like a
| young adult talking about something like politics, but if
| anything I was all the more early teenager in terms of
| uncertainty over sexuality and how people would react.
| mrbabbage wrote:
| As someone who came out at 18 (technically an adult), both:
|
| - younger--I had a vastly accelerated "social puberty" bc I
| started so much later than most folks.
|
| - older--for the reason you mentioned.
|
| - but now younger again--I don't feel the same pressure to have
| biokids, and thus not beholden to the "biological clock" that
| forces birthing parents to start families in their 30s. I'm 32
| and just went back to school, because why not! Plus, the
| pressure of the white gay dating scene forces me to take better
| care of myself (sleep, diet, exercise), which also make me feel
| younger.
| cwp wrote:
| I've had this basically my whole life. I used to joke that I was
| 16 going on 30 and everybody knew what I meant. Now it's going
| the other way.
|
| Also, I have this for other people. I still think of my brother
| as 23, and I have to do math to figure out how old he really is.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| It's not uncommon for me to be in a conversation with someone in
| their 30's or 40's and they think I'm younger than them. I still
| get hit on by 18, 19, and 20 year olds. I'm not interested but
| it's flattering. Perspective and attitude go a long way.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Same here. I think it's negatively affected my career prospects
| too, not that I care too much about that.
|
| Never thought it would be advantageous to be a schlubby balding
| guy, but I saw someone start the same day as me get way more
| respect immediately despite me being pretty clearly more
| technically competent than him. Maybe he was schmoozing behind
| the scenes, I don't know.
| erentz wrote:
| What would be the evolutionary conditions that would lead us to
| mentally think we are older as we age? For much of evolutionary
| history we were expected to produce offspring then kick the
| bucket. No advantage to feeling older, not even expected to get
| that much older than what most people feel.
|
| If we solved the problem of aging this wouldn't be a puzzle at
| all and it would immediately make perfect sense. The age we feel
| we are would correspond roughly to the age we were fully
| developed (mid 20s) and the age our body would stay at without
| aging.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's almost certainly a mistake to think that every feature of
| a system subject to selection pressure is a result of that
| selection pressure. Most real world selection leaves plenty of
| room for features to emerge (or disappear) that don't change
| selection fitness.
| Tarsul wrote:
| it doesn't help that the dreams I have are also of yesteryear
| events.
| cassonmars wrote:
| I wonder how much this schism exists in people who were near
| death in a "younger" age. I've had a couple of reminders of my
| mortality from my 20s to early 30s now and it's firmly grounded a
| "now or never" mindset to getting things done, because nothing is
| guaranteed. In the same vein, I'm very continually aware of my
| age and am mindful of the statistically likely years I have left.
|
| Memento Mori.
| bennyelv wrote:
| Interestingly, I've experienced exactly the same thing, but the
| outcome is that I care very little about what people think
| would be an "age appropriate" approach to life and just
| optimise for maximum fulfilment right now, whatever form that
| takes.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| It seems to me that in constructing an answer to that question,
| we are weighing our social and developmental progress against the
| ages we generally associate to social and developmental
| milestones.
|
| It's a bit like asking someone how far they have walked today.
| They aren't going to go back and count the steps. Instead, they
| will consider what landmarks they passed, and what events they
| encountered, try to add them all together, and compare that sum
| against other distances traveled that they _do_ have explicit
| measurements for.
|
| The length of a journey is most often described, not as an
| accounting of unit measure, but from weighing the complexity of
| the story one would tell about it.
|
| This kind of narrative measurement is already present in most of
| our conversations about age. What age do people learn to read, to
| swim, or to ride a bicycle? How old is a grandparent? Are you too
| late in life to start a family? When should a person begin
| retirement? All of those narratives set a rubric of expectations:
| a domain and scale for age itself.
|
| When we ask someone how old they "feel", we are intentionally
| vague. We are asking for the "age" that isn't defined by time. So
| a person constructs a new definition or of the narratives that
| are familiar to them, and tells us where they see themselves in
| that collection of narratives.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://archive.ph/nC2bL
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