I'm going to turn 60 later this year. Most of the things I notice are still subtle, but I figure over time, they'll get worse.
* When I wake up, I don't feel rested.
* I'm even more forgetful, so a fast paced job or learning a new job feels harder
* I don't heal as fast from injury or workouts
* I slowly gain weight unless I \*really\* watch my calories. I now eat about 150-200 less than I used to.
* My hearing has a frequency range that has a mild dip in sensitivity. I miss some conversation cues. It's not bad, but I will likely need hearing aids one day.
* Bi/tri focals suck! Trying to find things in dark cabinets when looking up or down, means you're looking through the wrong part of your glasses. I'm adjusting to lots of times the world is temporarily fuzzy for me.
* Night adaptation for vision is slower. I get there, but walking into a dark space from a light one takes me much longer to adapt. It's a problem when driving because headlights to darkness happens over and over again.
* Old injuries cause me to feel aches some days.
* My immune system isn't as good. I used to never get colds. It's no longer my superpower.
* I've been around long enough to see the pendulum swing back and forth, so "new" ideas no longer thrill as much. I've seen most fade away, get reverted back to the former state, society totally mess up implementation...etc. So I now have a wait and see attitude. I'm not jaded or a luddite, but I don't pounce on the new/shiny like I used to.
[Yes.](https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/how-hearing-aids-may-help-you-prevent-dementia-2#:~:text=Researchers%20continue%20to%20uncover%20evidence,for%20people%20wearing%20hearing%20aids). It won’t prevent Alzheimer’s/dementia necessarily as there are many reasons why people get it but there is evidence that it lowers your risk of developing it.
Hearing loss tends to isolate people. They feel embarrassed about it and eventually stop, or greatly reduce their social interactions. Less social interaction = less cognitive stimulation, which can be a factor in types of dementia.
This should be upvoted so much higher! I’m Turing 53 this summer and I see all of this! The bi/tri focals thing — I never got used to it, so I have glasses where one eye is for reading and the other is for distance. It’s weird but it works for me. That’s the sort of thing that age does.
20 more years and you can get cataract surgery and your eyes are like new again. I'm almost 70 and have worn glasses for over 60 of them, not anymore, it's great.
Also? I'm slower mentally.
Like, I'm not dumber than I was back when I was 20. But my focus isn't as great, my memory is worse, and it takes me longer to work out solutions to complex problems. I can mitigate some of that, memory especially. But it's still reality. I wish it wasn't.
No one likes doing maintenance. It sucks to clean the house, take the car to the mechanic for tune up or oil changes, etc. But you gotta do it, and the same applies to your body. You gotta exercise and eat right, because it all builds up and will snowball into worse and worse degeneration. And then you'll need either medication, or a procedure, or a surgery and your chances of getting better depend on how fit your body is. So the fitter you are, the less your chances of needing something, and if/when you do need something you'll stand a better chance of improving.
If you really want to see the importance of maintenance, work in a nursing home for a few months. Some people are just unfortunate. I don’t know how preventable dementia is. One of the worst cases of dementia I’ve ever seen is in a guy who used to run marathons and still looks like he used to run marathons. But on average…if your knees hurt at 40, it will be hard to stand up at 60. If you have trouble walking a block at 50, you might need help going to the bathroom at 70. And take it easy with alcohol. If I told you what I’ve seen in people with Wernicke Korsakoff dementia, you might not believe me. People in their 50s and 60s with no short-term memory. Some of them unable to walk or feed themselves. It’s terrifying.
But once you get in the routine of doing the maintenance you’ll love the benefits. I exercise 4-5x a week (light strength training and running). I don’t have random pains I wake up with like other 44 year olds. If I injure myself running, it only takes a couple of days to heal.
Regular exercise is extremely important and addictive.
Everyone says that. I've found it different. I also exercise 4-5x a week and I hate every minute of it lol. But I see the end results in people who don't exercise and eat like crap, so thats motivation enough to avoid that kind of fate.
You may not be keeping score but your body is. Random injuries, longterm slacking on self care like poor diet, drug and alcohol consumption, not brushing teeth or flossing, not getting enough sleep, even just being in the sun - everything isn’t a problem until it is.
On the positive side, people who consistently take care of their teeth, skin, nutrition, weight, physical activity, and mental health see a huge pay off in the older years.
The best thing a younger person can do is to develop good habits. It's so worth it.
Absolutely, hopefully. People are never prepared for that one accident or illness that knocks you out and causes disability.
People think about getting life insurance but don’t think about disability insurance
Yes, it’s a thing. It’s an incredibly important thing. How would you support yourself if you were suddenly disabled and unable to work? If you were in a car accident and couldn’t work for 8 months? If you got covid which turned into long covid? It happens to people everyday.
I had to abruptly stop teaching due to disability and thank goodness my teacher retirement system had disability insurance. Most pay a percentage of your salary. ( I wound up bringing home more money than I made teaching cause I no longer had to pay the 12% into retirement).
Social security disability can take years to get approved for if you get approved so you can’t count on that in the beginning.
Damn...you're onto something.
thank you for sharing your story and enlightening us on disability insurance and not gatekeeping that information. Matter of fact, thank you for being an educator, period. You're appreciated.
Well not necessarily and that’s the real truth about aging. What you say is true on average, but average is just that, circled around the 50th percentile. There are many who have taken great care of themselves who find themselves victim to , genetic/ familial surprises likec high blood pressure, high cholesterol, auto immune issues, arthritis, cancer and the list goes on.
IMO the truth about all of life is nothing we do leads to certainty now or in the future. Do the best you can. Live in moderation in all things. Hope for the best.
One of the first patients I ever had when I was in nursing school was a 60 year old woman who was an avid runner, and would backpack and hike through Europe every summer. She didn't drink, never smoked, ate well, and took great care of her skin because she looked a solid 10 years younger than her stated age. She was in the hospital after a massive heart attack that almost killed her.
There's a scene from a TV show that lives rent free in my head. It's maybe from Grey's Anatomy? It's been over a decade since I've seen it. Basically it's a middle aged woman going nuts in a hospital room filled with delivery cakes, going "I deprived myself my WHOLE LIFE. I exercised! I said no to desserts! And for what?! I still got this disease. Fuck all of this."
Sounds like our family doctor. He was a health guru, runner, jogger, vitamin taker, skinny as, had never eaten sugar ( his personal idea of demon food), was constantly berating ( justifiably) our father for his hideous crap high fat diet.
Doc was found deceased while doing a park run in the early morning aged 59.
Dad died at 91 in an accident.
My cardiologist after my diagnosis (I'm 69): "Running marathons is correlated to having atrial fibrillation (afib) later in life."
What?!
I was so proud of running two marathons in my twenties / taking good care of myself for all of these years.
No good deed goes unpunished...
My mom and I were talking about beauty and aging
Younger people who are “pretty” are usually those who are genetically gifted, however as you get older, those who take care of themselves are the generally ones who look the best aesthetically
Happiness is the best makeup! I've never been conventionally "pretty" but I have aged well--your skin gives you away. My mother always told me to stay out of the sun. She had beautiful skin until the day she died. Skin care helps, but it's temporary.
Ugh, yes. This one is painful. The people who meant everything to you in your 20s will become maybe a once every couple of months get together for dinner and drinks kind of friendship. If you're lucky. Some people will drift away permanently
And people start dying. Overdosing and suicide when you're younger. Car accidents can happen anytime. As you age it becomes heart attacks, cancer, stroke.
Yeah this one is hitting me the most. My outlook and mental battle with mortality and the guarantee of death not only in myself but others around me is hitting hard right now and I haven't even turned 30 yet!
I'm about to turn that age mark, and I'm beginning to wonder when, not if, I'm going to check up on a former friend I lost contact with, only to find out they died years ago and I didn't know.
And how that will absolutely fucking floor me mentally for a while despite preparing for it.
Ugh...A few years ago, maybe around 2021, my mom received a Facebook message from my aunt's (her little sister's) childhood best friend asking how she could get in contact with my aunt. My mom felt terrible informing this woman that my aunt died all the way back in 2013. She died at only 41, so that must have been a shock.
That can happen at any age...we hired a contractor back in about 2010 or so. Hubby and I were in our late 20's/ early 30's. The contractor was also around our age with 2 kids (maybe a bit younger) He built our deck, installed our hardwood flooring, and did the majority of our basement so we got to know him quite well while he worked for us.
A few months after everything was done, hubby had a hard time reaching him..left several messages and nothing. We then get a random call from his wife who informed us he passed in a motor vehicle accident. He.was only 29 when he died. Completely floored us.
This happened to me at 29. I’d lost touch with a good friend when I moved away in 2007. Moved back home in 2012. After my daughter was born a couple months later, I started looking for him on social media… and found out he’d died in a car accident two weeks after I moved home. It’s bothered me ever since.
I consider myself lucky that my friends from school are still my besties. We had a group chat and message each other daily. We've lost a few, gained a few, but the core group has been together since we were 15-16.
I'm an only child with some stepfamily. After my mom died so did all of her blood family (she was one of the youngest and had me later in life) and all the stepfamily stopped having to do anything with me. I've know them since I was 7 but fuck me I guess.
All it takes is one death for the dominoes to fall. I've made peace with it. That's all I can really do about that.
I’m on the younger end too and oddly worried about everyone dying and me being left alone a lot when I was little. I don’t know why I worried about that so much. Reality is that we have drifted apart a lot while we are all still alive. People get busy with their lives. You learn where you are in priority and it’s not as high as you assume it would be.
Yes, this is a painful truth. I actually had this realization this weekend when I was thinking about all the people I grew up with and was close to. We are not anymore, and not out of ill intent, but...you're just not as important in their lives anymore :(
It happens way faster than you think. I thought I would never get through my teens. My 20s were brisk, but they took a while. My 30s were the Autobahn, and my 40s were the Concorde.
I expect to be applying for Medicare by lunchtime.
I believe it's something to do with routine. Your mind doesn't need to make many new memories if every day you do the same thing - so you look back and wonder where the time went because you have so few memories. To mitigate this you need to be doing something novel and interesting every day so your brain has a reason to store memories (which the length of the past isn't measured in time, it's measured in the amount of memories you have).
for example: when you were a kid, practically every day was a new experience in some way, so time seemed to drag on forever. Once you start working pretty much every single day of the week is exactly the same, so they all blend together. Need to keep doing new/interesting stuff and it'll slow down for you.
I think it's perception as well. I sometimes find myself looking back and thinking "where did the year go?" but when I _really_ stop to think of what has happened in that year, it's a lot. As you say, routine makes days blend together, so you have to put in some effort to tease them back apart.
At 10 years of life a decade is all you’ve lived, you perceive it as a long amount of time. At 50 years of life a decade is just a fifth of what you’ve lived, you perceive it as being a lot shorter.
Time really does fly as you get older. 5 years from now seems exceptionally close when I think about how fast the previous 5 years flew by. It'll be here faster than I know it.
You'll never really feel like one of the grownups. You will always be you, the grownups will keep getting even older, and everyone visibly younger than you is a kid.
People at my office are freaked out that I am retiring soon because I do so many things. I keep trying to tell them that the young folks taking my job(s) will do a much better job than I ever did.
And they will.
A 93-yr-old told me this and also that you'll continually say to yourself, "I can't believe I ever used to think that [current age] was really old. [Current age + 10]? Now *that's* old."
I know that feeling. Best advice i can give is do something that feels small and doable every day, eventually what you consider small and doable will grow in size, and one day you might realize that what was once an overwhelming burden is now an easy task, and that you might even be able to do things you now consider tough.
There is no reason in trying to speedrun life, just build slowly.
I'm only 50. The one thing (aside from what was mentioned by others) is how many friends, classmates, family members... so many of them have died. And the longer I stick around the more will die off..
I work in a nursing home with lots of folks in their 90's, and one thing most have in common is that everyone they ever knew and loved is dead.
My father is 85, his brother was 93 and passed just this last January.
My uncle was the last remaining person, not just family, but friend that knew my father in the 1940’s-early to late 70’s.
It’s very surreal to think that anyone who knew my father during that time period is gone and he’s the last remaining one. It doesn’t bother my father though, lol. I suppose once you get to that age it’s just how it is.
I want to sit down with my dad and video tape him questions about his life to have some remaining historical recording .
My MIL lost her brother a couple years back. Everyone else in her family was already gone. Old friends are gone.
When she spoke at the funeral, the part that absolutely broke my heart was when she said, "You were the last one who knew our childhood." And started listing memories of their youth. Happy memories of friends and family at their childhood home.
Everyone in those memories is gone. Her childhood is something only she remembers.
I think about it even years later.
I've been thinking about this in terms of how much of a waste of mental energy it is to wish death on anyone because it absolutely will happen one day regardless of how much anyone wants it to or not.
In other words if you've ever at any point wished someone would die, I have bad news; you didn't have to throw that nickel into a filthy fountain at the museum to get your wish. It was never in doubt that the person in question would die.
A sobering reality is that staying healthy gets harder as you age. What’s easy in your twenties needs more effort later on. Building good habits now really pays off in the long run.
If you think you feel old now, imagine what you'll feel like in 10 years. 15 even. If you're 26 and you feel old, I have news for you. 36, 42, 60... You'll probably still be here so start taking care of that meat suit.
Nah, life started at 27 for me. 27 is when I really found myself, and stopped being just my parents kid and the person people thought I was. Honestly it was the best year of my life (so far) in a lot of ways. My mom says it was the same for her.
Im in my 40s and still feel like I don't know what I'm doing half the time. But I know who I am.
I know that feeling of feeling old. But you aren't. Neither am I ( or so I keep telling myself!) and I'm almost twice your age. So don't let it hold you back!
As a 35 year old who feels younger than I did at 26, there’s hope! Your 20s are rough. Take care of yourself. I always say I had more fun in my 20s but I’m so much happier in my 30s.
It hurts. Random pains that Dr's tell you "Well that's part of aging." but then you get used to hurting a little all the time and ignore the new one that will actually kill you if you don't pay attention to it.
Happened to my grandma. 77 years old, had a pain in her leg at Christmas, figured she'd talk to a doctor about it in a few months, didn't make it to next Christmas.
On the flip side, everyone remains a child forever. So if you're going to expect other adults to behave like mature, logical, fair, responsible, productive members of society, you are going to be very disappointed.
This is especially hard when you see those in positions that hold great power and responsibility are really just overgrown 12 year olds.
I went to see the former British prime minister Boris Johnson in person once, when he was mayor of London, having his monthly audience with the London Assembly. Everyone knows he's a bit of a man-child, but you could not prepare yourself. He hated being questioned, and he would quite literally stand up and stomp around like an angry 3-year-old, griping and moaning. It was a truly pathetic scene.
Don't get me wrong; I'm absolutely sure I have my undignified moments. This was another level.
Nothing changes. You're still just that kid, but now people expect things of you. You blink and you have grey hair and one day you eat pizza and your stomach can't handle it anymore. You just slowly fall apart without realizing it until you look in the mirror and an old person looks back at you.
I’m 43 and I look so much like my mother, it legitimately freaks me out sometimes. I’m estranged from my family (abuse etc) so sometimes when I see my own reflection for a split second, I think it’s her.
My brain is still 22 though. I really haven’t changed much — obviously I’ve matured in the sense that I’m no longer an irresponsible idiot, but I’m still the same person and I often forget how old I am. Really not looking forward to what comes next tbh.
**Edit because apparently people on this web site cannot read:** I said I’ve matured and am no longer irresponsible like I used to be. When I said that my brain is still 22 I just meant that I still feel young and my tastes (such as music etc) haven’t changed much. Jesus Christ.
"you look in the mirror and an old person looks back at you"
I'm 54 now, but I was 43 when I got my first pair of glasses. After trying them on the first time, the gal helping asked what I thought...I said I hated them...why?...I can see how much older I am now. My astigmatism had been softening up my features over the years so I couldn't really see myself aging. Stupid glasses certainly fixed that.
On a positive note. Starting around 38+ you'll stop giving a fuck about the opinion of others. It becomes so obvious that you shouldn't have ever cared. There's probably no one judging because no one actually gives a fuck. And in the end it doesn't matter one fucking shred.
I wish I would have spent 16-38 not giving a fuck about what others think.
The ol 20/40/60 rule. At 20 you care what people think about you. At 40 you don’t care what others think about you. At 60 you realize no one was ever even thinking about you in the first place!
Yeah same. I'm 27, and I don't care what people think. Don't get me wrong, I love people and have great relationships, but I know who I am and what I'm about. If someone doesn't like it, that sounds like it's more of a them problem than a me problem. And like the original comment said, they probably aren't even concerned with me in the first place, so why worry?
I get not giving a fuck what others think as a positive thing but, on its own, it can be used to justify all kinds of shit behaviour.
I've known a few people who didn't care what people thought and they were awful. They're late to things, cancel at the last minute, just generally behave inappropriately, all because they really don't give a fuck what people think of them. Utterly shameless.
Sure, and taken to 100% extreme it would become a bad thing. Probably more accurate to.say would be that it is better that we care less about what others think about us than we did when we were younger. But I agree, literally not caring at all would be a bad thing.
Not giving a fuck means not to get bothered by other's opinions mentally. People become awful when they have no ethics. That's why they don't respect others'time.
this is advice as a former icu nurse - I’ll start with a story…. This scenario is not unique and I have seen it so many times in various forms, but this particular one hit me in the gut and I will never forget this family. Maybe because the couple seemed so genuinely in love, and were so close to enjoying their golden years together….i took care of them almost a decade ago….
Wonderfully happy couple in their late 60s/early 70s, one had just retired, the other was set to retire in a month, trip booked for the Philippines, ready to enjoy their golden years together in retirement. The spouse told me they had saved every penny and bit of their lives for this next chapter. Unfortunately the husband got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, almost immidiately admitted into our ICU. We ultimately terminally extubated and put him on comfort care so he could exit this world without pain. I’m tearing up thinking about this particular couple as I write this. I was their nurse every shift for the few weeks they attempted to fight the disease before he passed away.
So yes, I agree with everything people have said about moderation etc and healthy habits. But the only thing we are promised in this life, is our mortality. Our next breath is not promised. We can save everything for the future only to never be able to enjoy it. *****So my advice…is bring out those special vases and use them, use ur fancy silverware when u so desire, don’t live recklessly, but enjoy your life
THIS. This is why I believe in spending your money, going on those travels + crossing off that bucket list when young vs wait for some golden retirement era that just may never come. Of course making sure you have enough to live comfortably for your potential retirement is important, but please use those vacation days at work and actually go on those vacations now.
I've seen this so much in healthcare and throughout my life, but the worst example for me of it was from my late, beloved in-laws because it was so personal and unexpected. They worked their asses off all their life and dreamed for decades of selling their home, getting a grand RV + traveling the country. It was all they talked about + saved for, and the day was coming near now as they both had 5 years to retire. MIL one night died in her sleep unexpectedly from a pulmonary embolism at 58 years old + no prior symptoms. One minute going for a normal nights sleep then dead a few hours later. FIL went into a deep depression and never recovered. Began isolating himself from society and no longer caring for himself. 2 years later he collapsed while grocery shopping and later diagnosed in ER with stage 4 lung cancer at 62 and a month prognosis. Made it 3 weeks. Losing them both so young was devastating, but knowing that they worked so hard and saved up for their dream retirement plan to travel and then never ever got to travel and have fun together was gut wrenching.
Retirement imo should never be the period of life we plan to do the things we always wanted to. Reaching it is a blessing, never a guarantee and reaching it with the people we want to enjoy those dreams with is especially not a guarantee.
Live your lives fully and do so daily as if it were your last. It very well could be.
Nobody ever really feels like they have their shit together.
It took me until my 30s to realise that there’s no age where all of a sudden you become a calm professional adult, where everything slots together nicely and you finally feel like you’re in full control.
We all just muddle along and do our best, year by year.
Realizing this was really crazy for me because my mom is the adultiest-adult I know. My two closest friends who grew up with me agree with that assessment. I mentioned it to my mom once and she laughed at me! She says that she's just figuring it out as she goes too!
It’s funny isn’t it? From the outside it’s so easy to see someone and think “Oh they’re a REAL adult!” but on the inside we’re all just kids playing dress up 😄
This is true, but I've also found that as I get older and experience more "setbacks", I do find I'm better equipped to tackle them just because I've lived more life.
You will eventually take on a parental role for your parents.
As you age, so do your parents. And if you are close in each others' lives and capable, eventually the roles will flip.
It is difficult, sad, and inevitable that if they remain alive, as they continue to age you will become their caregiver and advocate for the remaining duration of their lives.
Today my father got a Parkinson's diagnose. Our relationship is difficult to say the least, but fuck, he doesn't deserve that. Slowly but surely, more family members die or get ill. I'm not ready for it.
All those nasty whacks, dings, bumps, and whallops that you laughed off (or maybe cried away) when you were a kid, and then forgot about 20 minutes later?
Your body didn't forget, buddy. It didn't forget and will start to remind you again when you're in your 40s ...
I remember when friends of mine bought a split-level home and my mom commented "Not planning on getting old, are they?"
I get it now, Mom. I really get it.
A few months ago my body forgot how to run. I was doing my daily jog with my dogs when all of a sudden my ankle decided it had done enough bending for the day, so my toes never touched the ground. Instead, my foot just said "here is fine" in midair and I went down. Made a quick look around to make sure no neighbors saw me, then slowly walked back home, defeated.
I scabbed my knee up and didn't even think about running for the next few weeks as I contemplated the years ahead of me.
"So what you're saying doc is that it's just gonna hurt forever?!"
"Yeah. That sounds about right."
"I'm only 34!"
"Now you know why old people are so grumpy."
Yes to this. I hike, I'm in my 50's. Various parts of my body just stop playing occasionally. No warning, like the arch of my foot will communicate with the brain as if it's just stepped barefoot on a lego and I'm down, a knee will suddenly explode in pain enough to give your brain an ice cream headache but it's fine the next day. I find all my body parts more and more sus as I age. I need to keep a note in my pocket that says "I didn't jump off this cliff, I'm old, I fell over".
And as you get older falling becomes progressively more dangerous and carried the potential for not recovering from. My mother fell, broke her shoulder , wasn't even 60 yet, but only has about 90% mobility back. Doctors said she's lucky as many people would have walked away with much more limited mobility or possibly disabled from it. She simply tripped, it wasn't even a serious accident. That stuff surprises people.
Doing some basic physical balancing techniques every day to retain balance can do a lot for you. My grandmother did them every day, only had one fall because she was blind and couldn't see something. Was very mobile until she passed at 91, did some basic balance every day.
A retired Navy SEAL said exactly this.
Survived a multitude of NDEs, blown up, shot, bounced back like Bionic Action Man again, again, again, yet again.
Retired, mountain climbed, ice camped into his 40s ------
**BANG**
It has all come due and he lives in constant pain now.
I didn't have my wisdom teeth removed until I was 38 years old. Let me tell ya, kids. Get your wisdom teeth out when you are still a teen/early 20s.
It took a solid two months for me to recover from the open gaps in my head-hole. Your body just does.not.heal the way it used to, before life started to be done with you.
I endured over 13 humiliating tip over crashes fruitlessly trying, and ultimately failing, as a bicyclist, to learn using clipless pedals.
Twenty - four (24) years later -- I developed lymph node blockage (lymphedema) in the leg I kept crash landing on.
Lymph node in my groin belatedly scarred and blocked lymph circulation.
Surgeon said he's met lots of athletic people who, decades later, consulted him w sudden onset lymphedema situated at old injury sites.
If you live long enough to grow old, you will become disabled.
Being able-bodied is temporary. Even the most able bodied elderly people still have disabilities.
disability access and accomodations aren’t just for “disabled people”. They’re for you, too, one day when you’ll need them.
Our greatest resource as a species is time. We only have so much, and it can be priceless at times.
Staying healthy and fit helps increase that most valuable resource.
No one cares if you're sad/mad. I know this sounds weird but I def had a big slap in the face upon realizing not one soul in the adult realm gives a flying F if you're upset or overwhelmed.
this hit me last year as I am 32 right now. In one hand it is great to acknowledge this but I also lost my desire to share worries and sadness with anyone anymore.
Eh people definitely care. Just because they don't drop everything and put your emotions as their top priority day in and day out doesn't mean they just don't care
You get more confident in yourself and your relationships, you appreciate good things much more, especially comfort, and you are more immune to superficial nonsense.
Disclaimer: the above only applies if you stay away from social media and tv news ragebait
At 51yo I’ve been coming to grips with my mortality and the realization that I’m on the downward slide towards death. Looking back wandering where it all went and what happened to all those dreams I had. I have a greater appreciation for my wife and 4 sons because without them I’ve accomplished very little of what I had hoped.
I know what you mean about forgotten dreams. But at the same time I've realised that most of that stuff was not really important anyway - I thought I would be a rich entrepreneur. Now I just want a chilled out life.
At 51 you're still young enough to travel, spend time with loved ones, learn new skills etc.
Apparently most deathbed regrets are around relationships, not being true to yourself etc. No one lies on their deathbed wishing they owned a Ferrari.
I am currently 35 and I am learning that sometimes, aging isn't slow. Sometimes something changes all at once, and just doesn't get better. It's harder to get doctors to take you seriously about a lot of things too.
For example, I've always had a very comfortable body to live in. No aches, no pains, no conditions, only one medical allergy and only one food allergy that isn't even that severe.
Then I got pregnant. Super easy pregnancy. Textbook. Amazingly comfortable given what I was expecting.
However, that pregnancy triggered lupus for me. Which means now I'm photosensitive, achey in the mornings for at least an hour, and my stomach can barely handle a lot of foods I ate regularly before. Doctors are trying to help but enthusiasm is low and between aging and being a woman it's a lot of "well, sometimes these things happen" as an attitude.
Same with my mom, who is now in her early 70s. She was doing so, so good until two years ago, when her leg started hurting. She ended up having back surgery and they found a cyst and removed it, but leg still hurts. Now that they can't see anything on the MRI, multiple doctors are starting to council her that "sometimes things just start to hurt when you get on in years," as if shooting nerve pain up your leg if you walk more than 30 minutes is just a natural part of the aging process.
tl;dr get used to advocating for yourself with doctors, because aging is up there with being overweight as an easy way to hand wave medical problems away.
You want documentation that that is their conclusion. As well as any refusals to do imaging or blood work and a copy of your file. They don't like that because if anything is found later on they are open to lawsuits and such.
I'm 70, and the hurts are just kicking in. All at once. Everywhere. Cognitive ability is top notch, but joints and muscle strength and stamina took a sudden downturn.
Also, remaining covered is a lot easier than slathering on the sun block every 2 hours.
Keeping the sun off you in the first place cools you off better than shorts and a t-shirt.
A sobering reality about aging that people should learn early on is that your social circle shrinks faster than a wool sweater in a hot dryer. Remember when you were a kid, and you thought you’d always have a gang of friends ready to do anything, from building tree forts to plotting world domination? Well, it turns out that aging is like a relentless game of musical chairs, but instead of just losing a chair each round, you also lose some of your buddies.
As you get older, you start noticing that people move away, get consumed by their families or careers, or just disappear into the mysterious abyss known as “having a life.” Your best friend from college? He’s now somewhere in Idaho raising alpacas. Your childhood neighbor? She’s living her dream in an eco-village with no Wi-Fi. And don’t even get started on the fact that, unfortunately, some friends will pass away, leaving you with memories and the sad realization that the social calendar you once had now looks like a deserted island.
The truly sobering part isn’t just the shrinking numbers but the realization that you didn’t see it coming. As a kid, you’re convinced that you and your buddies will be an unbreakable unit forever. You imagine decades of backyard barbecues, epic road trips, and spontaneous adventures. But instead, you find yourself cherishing the few gatherings you manage to squeeze into your increasingly busy schedule.
So here’s the real kicker: nobody warns you that you need to actively work at maintaining those friendships. Relationships require effort, time, and sometimes a little bit of that magical thing called "scheduling." You need to text first, plan the get-togethers, and sometimes even tolerate their weird hobbies (like collecting antique spoons). Because if you don’t, you might wake up one day and realize that the vibrant social tapestry you took for granted has been reduced to a solitary thread.
Physically you can actually keep yourself up really well for most of your life (outside of extenuating circumstances of course), if you develop the dietary and fitness discipline (doesn't have to be hardcore) or just have the genes for it.
But your perception of time corrects to understand that life is short and it's all going by too fast, and the time you thought you had isn't real. This is really why youth is wasted on the young. It doesn't mean it's ever 'too late', to change or do the things you want, but as a youth you don't really appreciate how rapidly life is speeding by. Our media doesn't help.
I woke up the other day, staring at my blinds, verbally assaulting nothing in particular that I couldn't believe my age or that it was already June. Just pure bitter 'what the fuck is this?!' disbelief.
And to that end, to add on: you don't really age past a certain point in your late 20's / early 30's. You gain experience and the wisdom that comes from it, and that does differentiate you from your younger self, but most of us don't fundamentally change as personalities once our brain really solidifies. Our bodies (and time) just betray our internal self image as the clock ticks by.
It’s really easy to end up alone. Especially for men.
Relationships take work and require vulnerability. And if you aren’t putting it in, they go away. For men in particular they aren’t encouraged to have close/intimate friends in the same way women are.
Many of our relationships are also proximity based and as you age you have less low effort ways to meet new people.
So join a local club for whatever your interests are; become a regular somewhere; send your friends and family random texts whenever you think about them (my SIL and I literally just snap each other cute dog pics; tell people what’s going on in your life; and listen to what’s happening in theirs.
Young people say things like:
“If you’re the one who always reaches out first, you don’t mean that much to them”
That’s horseshit. Never be afraid to be the first to reach out to someone you love.
It's not worth it in my opinion to cling to youth looks wise. Accept that there are changes and you're now an older person and stop caring about what others think.
I mean this in terms of stuff like wearing ankle socks, parting your hair on the side, etc. It's okay if the kids think you look old. You are old and that's okay. Wear the socks you like.
I took about 15 years off of paying work by staying at home to raise my 5 kids.I don't regret my choice but I wasn't really thinking how it would affect me financially long term.
Too many people do that--they stay at home with kids and justify it by saying, "Well daycare costs as much as I'd earn, so I might as well not work."
What they don't see is long term. Every year you don't work is one year less of your income, retirement account, & social security benefits. I divorced my abusive ex after 25 years so that harmed me economically too.
I'm a teacher and have a good pension package (I hope) within about 5 years but I do need to work until I'm in my late 60s. As you get older, you just don't have the same energy; working in a physically demanding job in your 60s really really sucks. I have back aches & knee aches every day. And I'm in very good shape.
I guess what I'm saying is to recognize your mortality and that your earning potential affects your life long term not just short term. It comes up much much sooner than you think it will. Think very seriously about your retirement; don't kick the can down the road.
Remember at 21 when you would work out really hard, or play a double header in softball? Remember the way you felt the next day until you recovered?
I'm 65. I feel like that all the time. It's just the new normal.
Time flies when you don't do anything.
Why do people say the years whiz by faster as you get older? Because people are locked into their routines, either by choice (usually) or out of necessity (occasionally). Routines are good but doing the same thing every day means you'll look back and wonder what happened to all that time. Lots of us experienced this during COVID lockdowns.
Stay active, both physically and mentally. Do new things. Get out of your comfort zone. Seek novelty. If you just go to work, come home, veg out and watch Netflix, and then do it again 3,000 times, no kidding it'll feel like ten years flew by. Nothing interesting happened!
And there will be a lot, A LOT, of people who are hostile to this idea, who get defensive and immediately start moralizing or explaining or justifying their own inaction. Too much work, ugh the bills, house needs fixin', kids, etc. Not all of those things can be avoided, and nobody likes to feel like they're responsible for anything lacking in their life. But ultimately you choose your own path. Keep it interesting.
Female stuff: That perimenopause can start way earlier than you think. Like, in your early to mid 30s. It's not just hot flashes and missed periods. It's a whole constellation of symptoms that might be subtle. Loss of estrogen is serious and causes all sorts of issues. Listen to Dr. Mary Claire Haver. Fascinating stuff!
Also, the 1000 different ways I didn't take care of myself in my 20s and 30s is starting to manifest itself now that I'm in my mid 40s. This shit is REAL. Seriously. On the flip though, all the things I started in my 20s (hot yoga mostly) is really paying off now.
And, I can't stress this enough, MOVE. You have to move. I'm not talking about working out necessarily. I'm talking about movement. Walk, stretch, squat. Lift something heavier than your phone and car keys daily. For the love of God, take care of your muscles and get yourself strong. "Skinny" won't help you when you're my age. Same with being obese.
A ray of hope: Getting older isn't something to be afraid of. I'd rather be in my 40s than in my 20s pr 30s any day. It's completely awesome not giving a fuck about what others think of you anymore. *I* care what I think of me. I live for myself and my family now and it's a huge relief.
You can't depend on your kids or other family to help you out financially. It isn't necessarily because they don't want to, but they may not be financially able to. Plan NOW for those later years.
Physical health, there’s something called health expectancy which is around 55, after that you will need medical help.
You don’t need to be a pro athlete but keep yourself relatively healthy and fit.
Aging can happen suddenly, you get one illness or injury that cripples you, forces you to change your diet/habits, threatens your life. That thing may very well kill you eventually and its not clear when. Everyone thinks it won't happen to them, but it's the exact opposite, it happens to almost everyone, it's just a question of when.
I was diagnosed with cancer at 52 four years ago. I was considered low risk. Before then, I was a healthy middle-aged person without any chronic conditions or medication needs. Physically, I could do whatever I wanted and generally felt good. People often mistook me for being in my 30s. However, cancer treatment aged me 20 years. I have neuropathy in my feet from chemo so things like running and even walking can be painful or hazardous (I've fallen hard 3 times and broke my elbow once). The medication I take to keep recurrence at bay has a number of side-effects including thinning bones, hair, constant low-grade muscle and joint pain, and insomnia. I now have one of those giant pillboxes your grandmother used to tote around when she traveled. Exercise is a must now or else I quickly lose strength and muscle tone. I can't move like I used to. I move a lot slower. Mentally it's been difficult adjusting because I was used to having a body that was strong and could do what I wanted it to. Instead of aging at a slower pace over decades, I did it all in the course of a year.
A therapist once told me that aging is an accumulation of disminishments. It just happens a lot faster for some than others.
Something is eventually gonna require you to have really good insurance. Failing organ, cancer, weird hard to diagnose ailment, freak skin allergy, teeth problems... take care of your health as much and as often as possible. Set yourself up to have as much financial agency during medical issues as you can. Eventually something is going to hit hard and that cushion could ultimately save your life.
Nothing is forever. Relationships, jobs, hometowns, your health…. It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into things, it all changes and can go away in a blink of the eye. Behold my works yea mighty and despair….
You can’t keep friends or family from dying. Other people’s lives diverge from yours and they move on.
Values will change. Fads will leave you behind. Your opinion will count less. Your favorite restaurant can close down, your city can decay, entire neighborhoods disappear…. And younger people won’t ever know the difference, much less care like you do.
Your body can, and eventually will betray you. Every joke or mean thing you ever said about old people will come back, and you will regret your stupidity even as you wish you were still ignorant of the indignities of age.
You start to really understand (not just know intellectually, but feel it), that not only are you NOT the center of the Universe, but that your life WILL end… and the world will still keep spinning. Life will go on without you, just as it always has, and always will. Sometimes that will be hard to take; Other times, it will give you peace of mind.
cancer does not give a shit how old you are. You might think. Hey I am in my mid 20s theres zero chance I have cancer. Cancer do s not care if you are 5 or 50. Might not necessarily be a sobering reality of aging. But as you get older you start realising how short life is and how fast it can end.
Every single thing about you deteriorates. Brain, hair, skin, arteries, tendons, vibes, eyes, retnas, tear ducts, memory, taste, friends and family... like termites in an old house. Also those people that live to 100 generally aren't having a good time. My sister wants to live to 100 and after taking care of my parents for 12 years while they went through dementia and broken hips and fucked up systems I'm like oh hell no. Watching everyone you know fall apart and die isn't fun either.
A lot of us actual boomers find things slow down in terms of new interests and the depth of social engagements/relationships. Some people have a plan to take up the slack with other things, often grandchildren.
If you haven’t made a plan for how to deal with this what you experience might be described by some as loneliness. This lack of engagement picks up momentum if you don’t interrupt the pattern of thinking that leads to this behaviour.
The best way to fight back is to attack it cognitively. Learning to adjust your POV and how you frame things, can have a veery good effect. See Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT. It works fast.
So be aware of this element in your preps for aging. Oh, and make some effort to contribute monthly, appropriate to your earnings, to a retirement plan. You will need the money for sure.
Two sobering possibilities: 1. you may not live as long as you should. 2. You might live *longer* than you should.
One of my parents did everything right. Healthy food, exercise, maintained relationships, positive mindset, saved for retirement. Got cancer and got to spend their one year of retirement dying. The universe isn’t fair.
My other parent did everything wrong. Smoking, drinking, bad diet, no exercise, let friendships fall by the wayside, goofed off, no savings, retired early on a small fixed income, reverse mortgaged their home. Not a bad person, was actually a good parent, just did not take care of themselves because they didn’t think they would live into old age for some reason. This one is still alive, and most of their time and limited energy is spent on doctors appointments, tests, painful surgeries and recoveries. They have no savings and will have to leave their home soon.
Live your life, take care of yourself. Part of it will be luck and circumstances, but part of it is up to you. Don’t depend on having time later in life to do things you’ve put off, but on the other hand don’t write checks - literally or metaphorically - that you can’t cash.
Your body simply doesn't do all the things you took for granted 20 years ago.
Sprint to the shops for fun? Nope.
Climb over the fence and jump down the other side? Nope.
Go all day and pee once? Nope.
Hear conversations in a crowded room? Nope.
See the stage clearly from the back of the hall? Nope.
Rarely ever visit a pharmacy? Nope.
Kneel down to pick up something from under the bed and jump back up again? Nope.
Remember the name of the person who bought your car last year? Nope.
Enjoy your youth, and plan for when it's passed!
Edit: for formatting.
Your health and fitness are not givens. After a certain age, you have to chase after that stuff. When you're young you can just do nothing and if you're not actively injuring yourself or eating like you've entered a competition for Youngest Heart Attack Ever, you'll be okay.
After about age 40 or so, you have to balance exercising enough to improve (or even maintain) your health and fitness, while so being super careful not to get injured because injuries will sideline you for longer than you think and may never heal properly. Stretching and strength training are important. Don't just do cardio.
I’m 62. I got in an elevator today. Just as the doors were closing the loudest fart rumbled out of me. I had zero warning it was coming. AND, I hadn’t eaten all day so I have no idea where it came from. I was mortified for the other two in the elevator, especially the lady who immediately moved away from me. I just pretended it didn’t happen. 🤦♀️ Aging is so fun.
1. Move it or lose it. You have to keep moving, walking, standing up and sitting down. If your shoulder hurts, exercise it. If your knee hurts, exercise it, don't baby your long term injuries because that compounds over time and you can lose total motion or end up in an electric scooter. If you are an able bodied person make sure you keep moving. It's really bad when you don't.
2. Don't diet, change your lifestyle. Eat generally healthy food with small meat portions and lots of vegetables that you make at home and cheat once in a while. (Pizza night, fried chicken night) Eating fast food and takeout every day is both bad for your health and for your wallet.
3. Hang out with people who like to cook and eat at home and are generally active. You will be more likely to have a healthier lifestyle if the people around you have healthier lifestyles.
This is always hard for people to understand. My wife and I like to stay home. Please stop trying to shame us to "get out" more. She is happy playing slots on her computer. I'm happy to go out , do the weekly shopping and cruising the internet when I'm done. No, I don't want to babysit the great-grand kids, go see parades or go to the beach. Forget the fire works on the 4th, seen them enough when the kids were small. Not going to go to the great-grand kids soccer, football, baseball games. They have grand-parents to do that. Post some pictures we can see on FB. When we decline invites to parties or get togethers don't get angry, we don't need the drama that comes with it. We understand you're busy, we were too when we were your age. We have 3 daughters, 6 grandkids and 9 great-grandkids. If we go to anything for one and not the other , we are accused of playing favorites . We will go to family gatherings, stay a few hours and head home before dark. We are happy and content with each other, after all, we just had our 56th anniversary. We enjoy the peace and tranquility of taking care of each other as best we can.
I'm going to turn 60 later this year. Most of the things I notice are still subtle, but I figure over time, they'll get worse. * When I wake up, I don't feel rested. * I'm even more forgetful, so a fast paced job or learning a new job feels harder * I don't heal as fast from injury or workouts * I slowly gain weight unless I \*really\* watch my calories. I now eat about 150-200 less than I used to. * My hearing has a frequency range that has a mild dip in sensitivity. I miss some conversation cues. It's not bad, but I will likely need hearing aids one day. * Bi/tri focals suck! Trying to find things in dark cabinets when looking up or down, means you're looking through the wrong part of your glasses. I'm adjusting to lots of times the world is temporarily fuzzy for me. * Night adaptation for vision is slower. I get there, but walking into a dark space from a light one takes me much longer to adapt. It's a problem when driving because headlights to darkness happens over and over again. * Old injuries cause me to feel aches some days. * My immune system isn't as good. I used to never get colds. It's no longer my superpower. * I've been around long enough to see the pendulum swing back and forth, so "new" ideas no longer thrill as much. I've seen most fade away, get reverted back to the former state, society totally mess up implementation...etc. So I now have a wait and see attitude. I'm not jaded or a luddite, but I don't pounce on the new/shiny like I used to.
Don't wait to get hearing aids. Got some at 45 and it's amazing. They are super discrete and double as bluetooth headphones.
Also unaddressed hearing loss is being linked strongly to dementia and Alzheimer’s, so getting it taken care of early can stave off those diseases
Wait, are you saying getting hearing aids early can keep you from showing other symptoms of those conditions later?
[Yes.](https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/how-hearing-aids-may-help-you-prevent-dementia-2#:~:text=Researchers%20continue%20to%20uncover%20evidence,for%20people%20wearing%20hearing%20aids). It won’t prevent Alzheimer’s/dementia necessarily as there are many reasons why people get it but there is evidence that it lowers your risk of developing it.
Hearing loss tends to isolate people. They feel embarrassed about it and eventually stop, or greatly reduce their social interactions. Less social interaction = less cognitive stimulation, which can be a factor in types of dementia.
This should be upvoted so much higher! I’m Turing 53 this summer and I see all of this! The bi/tri focals thing — I never got used to it, so I have glasses where one eye is for reading and the other is for distance. It’s weird but it works for me. That’s the sort of thing that age does.
20 more years and you can get cataract surgery and your eyes are like new again. I'm almost 70 and have worn glasses for over 60 of them, not anymore, it's great.
Also? I'm slower mentally. Like, I'm not dumber than I was back when I was 20. But my focus isn't as great, my memory is worse, and it takes me longer to work out solutions to complex problems. I can mitigate some of that, memory especially. But it's still reality. I wish it wasn't.
No one likes doing maintenance. It sucks to clean the house, take the car to the mechanic for tune up or oil changes, etc. But you gotta do it, and the same applies to your body. You gotta exercise and eat right, because it all builds up and will snowball into worse and worse degeneration. And then you'll need either medication, or a procedure, or a surgery and your chances of getting better depend on how fit your body is. So the fitter you are, the less your chances of needing something, and if/when you do need something you'll stand a better chance of improving.
If you really want to see the importance of maintenance, work in a nursing home for a few months. Some people are just unfortunate. I don’t know how preventable dementia is. One of the worst cases of dementia I’ve ever seen is in a guy who used to run marathons and still looks like he used to run marathons. But on average…if your knees hurt at 40, it will be hard to stand up at 60. If you have trouble walking a block at 50, you might need help going to the bathroom at 70. And take it easy with alcohol. If I told you what I’ve seen in people with Wernicke Korsakoff dementia, you might not believe me. People in their 50s and 60s with no short-term memory. Some of them unable to walk or feed themselves. It’s terrifying.
But once you get in the routine of doing the maintenance you’ll love the benefits. I exercise 4-5x a week (light strength training and running). I don’t have random pains I wake up with like other 44 year olds. If I injure myself running, it only takes a couple of days to heal. Regular exercise is extremely important and addictive.
Everyone says that. I've found it different. I also exercise 4-5x a week and I hate every minute of it lol. But I see the end results in people who don't exercise and eat like crap, so thats motivation enough to avoid that kind of fate.
You may not be keeping score but your body is. Random injuries, longterm slacking on self care like poor diet, drug and alcohol consumption, not brushing teeth or flossing, not getting enough sleep, even just being in the sun - everything isn’t a problem until it is.
On the positive side, people who consistently take care of their teeth, skin, nutrition, weight, physical activity, and mental health see a huge pay off in the older years. The best thing a younger person can do is to develop good habits. It's so worth it.
What's the saying? "The best beauty tip for your 50s is sunscreen in your 20s"
Also, "the best time to develop a new habit was 20 years ago; the second best time is now."
Same for planting trees
Yeah. Same for investing.
Really wish somebody told me in my 20’s 😝 That’s okay. Starting around 35 is better than never 🤷🏻♀️
Turning 37 in a few days and I've recently started taking better care of myself last 2 years. I feel better now than I did at 30.
Absolutely, hopefully. People are never prepared for that one accident or illness that knocks you out and causes disability. People think about getting life insurance but don’t think about disability insurance
>disability insurance That's a thing..?? Oh wow..did not know that.
Yes, it’s a thing. It’s an incredibly important thing. How would you support yourself if you were suddenly disabled and unable to work? If you were in a car accident and couldn’t work for 8 months? If you got covid which turned into long covid? It happens to people everyday. I had to abruptly stop teaching due to disability and thank goodness my teacher retirement system had disability insurance. Most pay a percentage of your salary. ( I wound up bringing home more money than I made teaching cause I no longer had to pay the 12% into retirement). Social security disability can take years to get approved for if you get approved so you can’t count on that in the beginning.
Damn...you're onto something. thank you for sharing your story and enlightening us on disability insurance and not gatekeeping that information. Matter of fact, thank you for being an educator, period. You're appreciated.
Well not necessarily and that’s the real truth about aging. What you say is true on average, but average is just that, circled around the 50th percentile. There are many who have taken great care of themselves who find themselves victim to , genetic/ familial surprises likec high blood pressure, high cholesterol, auto immune issues, arthritis, cancer and the list goes on. IMO the truth about all of life is nothing we do leads to certainty now or in the future. Do the best you can. Live in moderation in all things. Hope for the best.
One of the first patients I ever had when I was in nursing school was a 60 year old woman who was an avid runner, and would backpack and hike through Europe every summer. She didn't drink, never smoked, ate well, and took great care of her skin because she looked a solid 10 years younger than her stated age. She was in the hospital after a massive heart attack that almost killed her.
There's a scene from a TV show that lives rent free in my head. It's maybe from Grey's Anatomy? It's been over a decade since I've seen it. Basically it's a middle aged woman going nuts in a hospital room filled with delivery cakes, going "I deprived myself my WHOLE LIFE. I exercised! I said no to desserts! And for what?! I still got this disease. Fuck all of this."
Sounds like our family doctor. He was a health guru, runner, jogger, vitamin taker, skinny as, had never eaten sugar ( his personal idea of demon food), was constantly berating ( justifiably) our father for his hideous crap high fat diet. Doc was found deceased while doing a park run in the early morning aged 59. Dad died at 91 in an accident.
My cardiologist after my diagnosis (I'm 69): "Running marathons is correlated to having atrial fibrillation (afib) later in life." What?! I was so proud of running two marathons in my twenties / taking good care of myself for all of these years. No good deed goes unpunished...
On the other hand, if those people had taken worse care of themselves, the genetic issues they inherited would probably be a bigger problem for them
Or more likely happened sooner
This. And it’s pretty basic stuff. As I’m getting older, it’s astonishing how many of my friends don’t take care of themselves in the most basic ways.
Or you take care of yourself and you body goes to shit anyways. And you stay up all night trying not to puke because you dared to eat barbecue sauce
And then you wake up with a neck you can't turn because you 'slept wrong'
"Genetics loads the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger."
My mom and I were talking about beauty and aging Younger people who are “pretty” are usually those who are genetically gifted, however as you get older, those who take care of themselves are the generally ones who look the best aesthetically
Happiness is the best makeup! I've never been conventionally "pretty" but I have aged well--your skin gives you away. My mother always told me to stay out of the sun. She had beautiful skin until the day she died. Skin care helps, but it's temporary.
But how can I be happy in the shade
Big truth. When you're young, you think you're invincible. Then your body comes in and says "hey remember when xxx? Here's the result!"
People will gradually have their own lives and reach out less and less.
Ugh, yes. This one is painful. The people who meant everything to you in your 20s will become maybe a once every couple of months get together for dinner and drinks kind of friendship. If you're lucky. Some people will drift away permanently
And people start dying. Overdosing and suicide when you're younger. Car accidents can happen anytime. As you age it becomes heart attacks, cancer, stroke.
Yeah this one is hitting me the most. My outlook and mental battle with mortality and the guarantee of death not only in myself but others around me is hitting hard right now and I haven't even turned 30 yet!
I'm about to turn that age mark, and I'm beginning to wonder when, not if, I'm going to check up on a former friend I lost contact with, only to find out they died years ago and I didn't know. And how that will absolutely fucking floor me mentally for a while despite preparing for it.
Ugh...A few years ago, maybe around 2021, my mom received a Facebook message from my aunt's (her little sister's) childhood best friend asking how she could get in contact with my aunt. My mom felt terrible informing this woman that my aunt died all the way back in 2013. She died at only 41, so that must have been a shock.
That can happen at any age...we hired a contractor back in about 2010 or so. Hubby and I were in our late 20's/ early 30's. The contractor was also around our age with 2 kids (maybe a bit younger) He built our deck, installed our hardwood flooring, and did the majority of our basement so we got to know him quite well while he worked for us. A few months after everything was done, hubby had a hard time reaching him..left several messages and nothing. We then get a random call from his wife who informed us he passed in a motor vehicle accident. He.was only 29 when he died. Completely floored us.
This happened to me at 29. I’d lost touch with a good friend when I moved away in 2007. Moved back home in 2012. After my daughter was born a couple months later, I started looking for him on social media… and found out he’d died in a car accident two weeks after I moved home. It’s bothered me ever since.
Wait until your body begins to show signs of its age too. Makes it heaps more fun.
50+ here. Everything aches. Exercise hurts, and means you are less active the following day. You start forgetting things. Sleep is precious.
When you hit 40, if you do not have a pre-existing condition, one will be randomly assigned to you. Ask me how I know.
Living to 80 may not be all it's made up to be. Live life while you can
I consider myself lucky that my friends from school are still my besties. We had a group chat and message each other daily. We've lost a few, gained a few, but the core group has been together since we were 15-16.
How old are you? If you’re over 30 then that’s impressive.
My bestie and I been going strong since 8th grade. We are in our 40s now.
Same here. I’m so grateful for it, especially when I read what people usually say about those friendships in these kinds of threads.
Family too, this one hurts the most when you’re younger in the family.
I'm the youngest, my entire nuclear family is gone.
I'm an only child with some stepfamily. After my mom died so did all of her blood family (she was one of the youngest and had me later in life) and all the stepfamily stopped having to do anything with me. I've know them since I was 7 but fuck me I guess. All it takes is one death for the dominoes to fall. I've made peace with it. That's all I can really do about that.
I’m on the younger end too and oddly worried about everyone dying and me being left alone a lot when I was little. I don’t know why I worried about that so much. Reality is that we have drifted apart a lot while we are all still alive. People get busy with their lives. You learn where you are in priority and it’s not as high as you assume it would be.
You'll add them all on Facebook and/or other social media, and then realize you haven't seen them in real life in 20-30 years.
I'm going to spend time tomorrow with one of those FB friends I haven't seen in 20 years.
Yes, this is a painful truth. I actually had this realization this weekend when I was thinking about all the people I grew up with and was close to. We are not anymore, and not out of ill intent, but...you're just not as important in their lives anymore :(
It happens way faster than you think. I thought I would never get through my teens. My 20s were brisk, but they took a while. My 30s were the Autobahn, and my 40s were the Concorde. I expect to be applying for Medicare by lunchtime.
And it just keeps on getting faster. Days last the same. Months disappear.
Days are long, years are short
Once you’re over the hill, you pick up speed!
Every summer goes faster than the one before.
At 29 I am noticing this as well. It's freaking me out tbh.
I believe it's something to do with routine. Your mind doesn't need to make many new memories if every day you do the same thing - so you look back and wonder where the time went because you have so few memories. To mitigate this you need to be doing something novel and interesting every day so your brain has a reason to store memories (which the length of the past isn't measured in time, it's measured in the amount of memories you have). for example: when you were a kid, practically every day was a new experience in some way, so time seemed to drag on forever. Once you start working pretty much every single day of the week is exactly the same, so they all blend together. Need to keep doing new/interesting stuff and it'll slow down for you.
I think it's perception as well. I sometimes find myself looking back and thinking "where did the year go?" but when I _really_ stop to think of what has happened in that year, it's a lot. As you say, routine makes days blend together, so you have to put in some effort to tease them back apart.
At 10 years of life a decade is all you’ve lived, you perceive it as a long amount of time. At 50 years of life a decade is just a fifth of what you’ve lived, you perceive it as being a lot shorter.
Medicare by lunchtime. Laughed until the ambulance arrived. Too funny. Thanks.
Time really does fly as you get older. 5 years from now seems exceptionally close when I think about how fast the previous 5 years flew by. It'll be here faster than I know it.
Five years ago was just before the pandemic, which doesn't make sense because the pandemic was last week
You'll never really feel like one of the grownups. You will always be you, the grownups will keep getting even older, and everyone visibly younger than you is a kid.
Until you realize there are VERY few people around older than you. Then you wonder who will guide you.
It's a new time! Young people can be guides too. I'm middle-aged and young people are the right people to turn to, sometimes.
The interns at my office are smarter than a lot of my coworkers.
People at my office are freaked out that I am retiring soon because I do so many things. I keep trying to tell them that the young folks taking my job(s) will do a much better job than I ever did. And they will.
A 93-yr-old told me this and also that you'll continually say to yourself, "I can't believe I ever used to think that [current age] was really old. [Current age + 10]? Now *that's* old."
Time is of greatest value. Do what you really want to do and don’t postpone it.
It’s hard when you realize this and still feel frozen and unable to make a move
I know that feeling. Best advice i can give is do something that feels small and doable every day, eventually what you consider small and doable will grow in size, and one day you might realize that what was once an overwhelming burden is now an easy task, and that you might even be able to do things you now consider tough. There is no reason in trying to speedrun life, just build slowly.
I'm only 50. The one thing (aside from what was mentioned by others) is how many friends, classmates, family members... so many of them have died. And the longer I stick around the more will die off.. I work in a nursing home with lots of folks in their 90's, and one thing most have in common is that everyone they ever knew and loved is dead.
My father is 85, his brother was 93 and passed just this last January. My uncle was the last remaining person, not just family, but friend that knew my father in the 1940’s-early to late 70’s. It’s very surreal to think that anyone who knew my father during that time period is gone and he’s the last remaining one. It doesn’t bother my father though, lol. I suppose once you get to that age it’s just how it is. I want to sit down with my dad and video tape him questions about his life to have some remaining historical recording .
My MIL lost her brother a couple years back. Everyone else in her family was already gone. Old friends are gone. When she spoke at the funeral, the part that absolutely broke my heart was when she said, "You were the last one who knew our childhood." And started listing memories of their youth. Happy memories of friends and family at their childhood home. Everyone in those memories is gone. Her childhood is something only she remembers. I think about it even years later.
Good chances are that everyone they ever hated is dead too
I've been thinking about this in terms of how much of a waste of mental energy it is to wish death on anyone because it absolutely will happen one day regardless of how much anyone wants it to or not. In other words if you've ever at any point wished someone would die, I have bad news; you didn't have to throw that nickel into a filthy fountain at the museum to get your wish. It was never in doubt that the person in question would die.
I'm 54 & I too am amazed at all my dead friends & family. I'm nearly out of living people that I love & I wonder how long I've got
A sobering reality is that staying healthy gets harder as you age. What’s easy in your twenties needs more effort later on. Building good habits now really pays off in the long run.
If you think you feel old now, imagine what you'll feel like in 10 years. 15 even. If you're 26 and you feel old, I have news for you. 36, 42, 60... You'll probably still be here so start taking care of that meat suit.
I am 26 and feel old. I feel called out and hate this lol
Nah, life started at 27 for me. 27 is when I really found myself, and stopped being just my parents kid and the person people thought I was. Honestly it was the best year of my life (so far) in a lot of ways. My mom says it was the same for her. Im in my 40s and still feel like I don't know what I'm doing half the time. But I know who I am. I know that feeling of feeling old. But you aren't. Neither am I ( or so I keep telling myself!) and I'm almost twice your age. So don't let it hold you back!
I’m 26 and not having fun. Saving this comment to remind me it’s probably going to be fine :)
As a 35 year old who feels younger than I did at 26, there’s hope! Your 20s are rough. Take care of yourself. I always say I had more fun in my 20s but I’m so much happier in my 30s.
That aging at a different rate - physically and/or mentally - than your partner is really really hard.
It hurts. Random pains that Dr's tell you "Well that's part of aging." but then you get used to hurting a little all the time and ignore the new one that will actually kill you if you don't pay attention to it.
Happened to my grandma. 77 years old, had a pain in her leg at Christmas, figured she'd talk to a doctor about it in a few months, didn't make it to next Christmas.
You will remain a child forever. You just learn how to behave accordingly.
On the flip side, everyone remains a child forever. So if you're going to expect other adults to behave like mature, logical, fair, responsible, productive members of society, you are going to be very disappointed. This is especially hard when you see those in positions that hold great power and responsibility are really just overgrown 12 year olds.
These days, we're *lucky* if those in positions that hold great power and responsibility are overgrown 12 year olds :(
I went to see the former British prime minister Boris Johnson in person once, when he was mayor of London, having his monthly audience with the London Assembly. Everyone knows he's a bit of a man-child, but you could not prepare yourself. He hated being questioned, and he would quite literally stand up and stomp around like an angry 3-year-old, griping and moaning. It was a truly pathetic scene. Don't get me wrong; I'm absolutely sure I have my undignified moments. This was another level.
Nothing changes. You're still just that kid, but now people expect things of you. You blink and you have grey hair and one day you eat pizza and your stomach can't handle it anymore. You just slowly fall apart without realizing it until you look in the mirror and an old person looks back at you.
Yeah. I’m 56, my “inner voice” hasn’t really changed since I was in my teens. I look in the mirror now and see my dad looking back. Freaky.
I’m 43 and I look so much like my mother, it legitimately freaks me out sometimes. I’m estranged from my family (abuse etc) so sometimes when I see my own reflection for a split second, I think it’s her. My brain is still 22 though. I really haven’t changed much — obviously I’ve matured in the sense that I’m no longer an irresponsible idiot, but I’m still the same person and I often forget how old I am. Really not looking forward to what comes next tbh. **Edit because apparently people on this web site cannot read:** I said I’ve matured and am no longer irresponsible like I used to be. When I said that my brain is still 22 I just meant that I still feel young and my tastes (such as music etc) haven’t changed much. Jesus Christ.
"you look in the mirror and an old person looks back at you" I'm 54 now, but I was 43 when I got my first pair of glasses. After trying them on the first time, the gal helping asked what I thought...I said I hated them...why?...I can see how much older I am now. My astigmatism had been softening up my features over the years so I couldn't really see myself aging. Stupid glasses certainly fixed that.
Been feeling like this for a couple years now, this is all facts
On a positive note. Starting around 38+ you'll stop giving a fuck about the opinion of others. It becomes so obvious that you shouldn't have ever cared. There's probably no one judging because no one actually gives a fuck. And in the end it doesn't matter one fucking shred. I wish I would have spent 16-38 not giving a fuck about what others think.
The ol 20/40/60 rule. At 20 you care what people think about you. At 40 you don’t care what others think about you. At 60 you realize no one was ever even thinking about you in the first place!
I'm glad I did a speedrun.
Yeah same. I'm 27, and I don't care what people think. Don't get me wrong, I love people and have great relationships, but I know who I am and what I'm about. If someone doesn't like it, that sounds like it's more of a them problem than a me problem. And like the original comment said, they probably aren't even concerned with me in the first place, so why worry?
This 100%.
I quit caring what other people think of me. I dress the way I want to (comfortably) and let my hair go gray. It’s very liberating.
Turning 37 soon, so you’re saying I’ll get there next year?! God I hope so
It's so great. Wishing you a long, healthy middle age of giving zero fucks entirely.
I get not giving a fuck what others think as a positive thing but, on its own, it can be used to justify all kinds of shit behaviour. I've known a few people who didn't care what people thought and they were awful. They're late to things, cancel at the last minute, just generally behave inappropriately, all because they really don't give a fuck what people think of them. Utterly shameless.
Sure, and taken to 100% extreme it would become a bad thing. Probably more accurate to.say would be that it is better that we care less about what others think about us than we did when we were younger. But I agree, literally not caring at all would be a bad thing.
Not giving a fuck means not to get bothered by other's opinions mentally. People become awful when they have no ethics. That's why they don't respect others'time.
this is advice as a former icu nurse - I’ll start with a story…. This scenario is not unique and I have seen it so many times in various forms, but this particular one hit me in the gut and I will never forget this family. Maybe because the couple seemed so genuinely in love, and were so close to enjoying their golden years together….i took care of them almost a decade ago…. Wonderfully happy couple in their late 60s/early 70s, one had just retired, the other was set to retire in a month, trip booked for the Philippines, ready to enjoy their golden years together in retirement. The spouse told me they had saved every penny and bit of their lives for this next chapter. Unfortunately the husband got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, almost immidiately admitted into our ICU. We ultimately terminally extubated and put him on comfort care so he could exit this world without pain. I’m tearing up thinking about this particular couple as I write this. I was their nurse every shift for the few weeks they attempted to fight the disease before he passed away. So yes, I agree with everything people have said about moderation etc and healthy habits. But the only thing we are promised in this life, is our mortality. Our next breath is not promised. We can save everything for the future only to never be able to enjoy it. *****So my advice…is bring out those special vases and use them, use ur fancy silverware when u so desire, don’t live recklessly, but enjoy your life
THIS. This is why I believe in spending your money, going on those travels + crossing off that bucket list when young vs wait for some golden retirement era that just may never come. Of course making sure you have enough to live comfortably for your potential retirement is important, but please use those vacation days at work and actually go on those vacations now. I've seen this so much in healthcare and throughout my life, but the worst example for me of it was from my late, beloved in-laws because it was so personal and unexpected. They worked their asses off all their life and dreamed for decades of selling their home, getting a grand RV + traveling the country. It was all they talked about + saved for, and the day was coming near now as they both had 5 years to retire. MIL one night died in her sleep unexpectedly from a pulmonary embolism at 58 years old + no prior symptoms. One minute going for a normal nights sleep then dead a few hours later. FIL went into a deep depression and never recovered. Began isolating himself from society and no longer caring for himself. 2 years later he collapsed while grocery shopping and later diagnosed in ER with stage 4 lung cancer at 62 and a month prognosis. Made it 3 weeks. Losing them both so young was devastating, but knowing that they worked so hard and saved up for their dream retirement plan to travel and then never ever got to travel and have fun together was gut wrenching. Retirement imo should never be the period of life we plan to do the things we always wanted to. Reaching it is a blessing, never a guarantee and reaching it with the people we want to enjoy those dreams with is especially not a guarantee. Live your lives fully and do so daily as if it were your last. It very well could be.
Nobody ever really feels like they have their shit together. It took me until my 30s to realise that there’s no age where all of a sudden you become a calm professional adult, where everything slots together nicely and you finally feel like you’re in full control. We all just muddle along and do our best, year by year.
Realizing this was really crazy for me because my mom is the adultiest-adult I know. My two closest friends who grew up with me agree with that assessment. I mentioned it to my mom once and she laughed at me! She says that she's just figuring it out as she goes too!
It’s funny isn’t it? From the outside it’s so easy to see someone and think “Oh they’re a REAL adult!” but on the inside we’re all just kids playing dress up 😄
This is true, but I've also found that as I get older and experience more "setbacks", I do find I'm better equipped to tackle them just because I've lived more life.
I’m 64 and my shit is 85% together. I think that’s acceptable
Stay curious, develop talents, be interesting. Your personality will carry you long after people stop valuing you for your looks.
You will eventually take on a parental role for your parents. As you age, so do your parents. And if you are close in each others' lives and capable, eventually the roles will flip. It is difficult, sad, and inevitable that if they remain alive, as they continue to age you will become their caregiver and advocate for the remaining duration of their lives.
Today my father got a Parkinson's diagnose. Our relationship is difficult to say the least, but fuck, he doesn't deserve that. Slowly but surely, more family members die or get ill. I'm not ready for it.
All those nasty whacks, dings, bumps, and whallops that you laughed off (or maybe cried away) when you were a kid, and then forgot about 20 minutes later? Your body didn't forget, buddy. It didn't forget and will start to remind you again when you're in your 40s ...
I remember when friends of mine bought a split-level home and my mom commented "Not planning on getting old, are they?" I get it now, Mom. I really get it.
Not just that, but you're going to heal so, so much slower. Falls that I used to just walk off can take me out for a few days now.
I pulled my groin as a 47 year old. DO NOT RECOMMEND.
A few months ago my body forgot how to run. I was doing my daily jog with my dogs when all of a sudden my ankle decided it had done enough bending for the day, so my toes never touched the ground. Instead, my foot just said "here is fine" in midair and I went down. Made a quick look around to make sure no neighbors saw me, then slowly walked back home, defeated. I scabbed my knee up and didn't even think about running for the next few weeks as I contemplated the years ahead of me.
"So what you're saying doc is that it's just gonna hurt forever?!" "Yeah. That sounds about right." "I'm only 34!" "Now you know why old people are so grumpy."
Yes to this. I hike, I'm in my 50's. Various parts of my body just stop playing occasionally. No warning, like the arch of my foot will communicate with the brain as if it's just stepped barefoot on a lego and I'm down, a knee will suddenly explode in pain enough to give your brain an ice cream headache but it's fine the next day. I find all my body parts more and more sus as I age. I need to keep a note in my pocket that says "I didn't jump off this cliff, I'm old, I fell over".
And as you get older falling becomes progressively more dangerous and carried the potential for not recovering from. My mother fell, broke her shoulder , wasn't even 60 yet, but only has about 90% mobility back. Doctors said she's lucky as many people would have walked away with much more limited mobility or possibly disabled from it. She simply tripped, it wasn't even a serious accident. That stuff surprises people. Doing some basic physical balancing techniques every day to retain balance can do a lot for you. My grandmother did them every day, only had one fall because she was blind and couldn't see something. Was very mobile until she passed at 91, did some basic balance every day.
41 years old... can fuckin' confirm. Played football and boxed in high school. All that stuff is coming back with a vengeance.
A retired Navy SEAL said exactly this. Survived a multitude of NDEs, blown up, shot, bounced back like Bionic Action Man again, again, again, yet again. Retired, mountain climbed, ice camped into his 40s ------ **BANG** It has all come due and he lives in constant pain now.
I didn't have my wisdom teeth removed until I was 38 years old. Let me tell ya, kids. Get your wisdom teeth out when you are still a teen/early 20s. It took a solid two months for me to recover from the open gaps in my head-hole. Your body just does.not.heal the way it used to, before life started to be done with you.
I endured over 13 humiliating tip over crashes fruitlessly trying, and ultimately failing, as a bicyclist, to learn using clipless pedals. Twenty - four (24) years later -- I developed lymph node blockage (lymphedema) in the leg I kept crash landing on. Lymph node in my groin belatedly scarred and blocked lymph circulation. Surgeon said he's met lots of athletic people who, decades later, consulted him w sudden onset lymphedema situated at old injury sites.
If you live long enough to grow old, you will become disabled. Being able-bodied is temporary. Even the most able bodied elderly people still have disabilities. disability access and accomodations aren’t just for “disabled people”. They’re for you, too, one day when you’ll need them.
Our greatest resource as a species is time. We only have so much, and it can be priceless at times. Staying healthy and fit helps increase that most valuable resource.
No one cares if you're sad/mad. I know this sounds weird but I def had a big slap in the face upon realizing not one soul in the adult realm gives a flying F if you're upset or overwhelmed.
this hit me last year as I am 32 right now. In one hand it is great to acknowledge this but I also lost my desire to share worries and sadness with anyone anymore.
Eh people definitely care. Just because they don't drop everything and put your emotions as their top priority day in and day out doesn't mean they just don't care
😆 this is probably the most depressing as fuck thread I’ve read for a while. Someone post some positive things about ageing!
You can exercise away many of the negative effects of aging.
>Someone post some positive things about ageing! It ends eventually!
User name checks out.
You get more confident in yourself and your relationships, you appreciate good things much more, especially comfort, and you are more immune to superficial nonsense. Disclaimer: the above only applies if you stay away from social media and tv news ragebait
At 51yo I’ve been coming to grips with my mortality and the realization that I’m on the downward slide towards death. Looking back wandering where it all went and what happened to all those dreams I had. I have a greater appreciation for my wife and 4 sons because without them I’ve accomplished very little of what I had hoped.
I know what you mean about forgotten dreams. But at the same time I've realised that most of that stuff was not really important anyway - I thought I would be a rich entrepreneur. Now I just want a chilled out life. At 51 you're still young enough to travel, spend time with loved ones, learn new skills etc. Apparently most deathbed regrets are around relationships, not being true to yourself etc. No one lies on their deathbed wishing they owned a Ferrari.
I am currently 35 and I am learning that sometimes, aging isn't slow. Sometimes something changes all at once, and just doesn't get better. It's harder to get doctors to take you seriously about a lot of things too. For example, I've always had a very comfortable body to live in. No aches, no pains, no conditions, only one medical allergy and only one food allergy that isn't even that severe. Then I got pregnant. Super easy pregnancy. Textbook. Amazingly comfortable given what I was expecting. However, that pregnancy triggered lupus for me. Which means now I'm photosensitive, achey in the mornings for at least an hour, and my stomach can barely handle a lot of foods I ate regularly before. Doctors are trying to help but enthusiasm is low and between aging and being a woman it's a lot of "well, sometimes these things happen" as an attitude. Same with my mom, who is now in her early 70s. She was doing so, so good until two years ago, when her leg started hurting. She ended up having back surgery and they found a cyst and removed it, but leg still hurts. Now that they can't see anything on the MRI, multiple doctors are starting to council her that "sometimes things just start to hurt when you get on in years," as if shooting nerve pain up your leg if you walk more than 30 minutes is just a natural part of the aging process. tl;dr get used to advocating for yourself with doctors, because aging is up there with being overweight as an easy way to hand wave medical problems away.
You want documentation that that is their conclusion. As well as any refusals to do imaging or blood work and a copy of your file. They don't like that because if anything is found later on they are open to lawsuits and such.
Old people walk slow because everything hurts
I'm 70, and the hurts are just kicking in. All at once. Everywhere. Cognitive ability is top notch, but joints and muscle strength and stamina took a sudden downturn.
An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure when it comes to sun damage.
Also, remaining covered is a lot easier than slathering on the sun block every 2 hours. Keeping the sun off you in the first place cools you off better than shorts and a t-shirt.
A sobering reality about aging that people should learn early on is that your social circle shrinks faster than a wool sweater in a hot dryer. Remember when you were a kid, and you thought you’d always have a gang of friends ready to do anything, from building tree forts to plotting world domination? Well, it turns out that aging is like a relentless game of musical chairs, but instead of just losing a chair each round, you also lose some of your buddies. As you get older, you start noticing that people move away, get consumed by their families or careers, or just disappear into the mysterious abyss known as “having a life.” Your best friend from college? He’s now somewhere in Idaho raising alpacas. Your childhood neighbor? She’s living her dream in an eco-village with no Wi-Fi. And don’t even get started on the fact that, unfortunately, some friends will pass away, leaving you with memories and the sad realization that the social calendar you once had now looks like a deserted island. The truly sobering part isn’t just the shrinking numbers but the realization that you didn’t see it coming. As a kid, you’re convinced that you and your buddies will be an unbreakable unit forever. You imagine decades of backyard barbecues, epic road trips, and spontaneous adventures. But instead, you find yourself cherishing the few gatherings you manage to squeeze into your increasingly busy schedule. So here’s the real kicker: nobody warns you that you need to actively work at maintaining those friendships. Relationships require effort, time, and sometimes a little bit of that magical thing called "scheduling." You need to text first, plan the get-togethers, and sometimes even tolerate their weird hobbies (like collecting antique spoons). Because if you don’t, you might wake up one day and realize that the vibrant social tapestry you took for granted has been reduced to a solitary thread.
"I wonder how (insert name) is doing, haven't seen him for a few years?" "They died." It's happening more often as I get older.
You can do everything right and still be betrayed by time and your genetics.
Nose hair. So much nose hair.
Physically you can actually keep yourself up really well for most of your life (outside of extenuating circumstances of course), if you develop the dietary and fitness discipline (doesn't have to be hardcore) or just have the genes for it. But your perception of time corrects to understand that life is short and it's all going by too fast, and the time you thought you had isn't real. This is really why youth is wasted on the young. It doesn't mean it's ever 'too late', to change or do the things you want, but as a youth you don't really appreciate how rapidly life is speeding by. Our media doesn't help. I woke up the other day, staring at my blinds, verbally assaulting nothing in particular that I couldn't believe my age or that it was already June. Just pure bitter 'what the fuck is this?!' disbelief. And to that end, to add on: you don't really age past a certain point in your late 20's / early 30's. You gain experience and the wisdom that comes from it, and that does differentiate you from your younger self, but most of us don't fundamentally change as personalities once our brain really solidifies. Our bodies (and time) just betray our internal self image as the clock ticks by.
It’s really easy to end up alone. Especially for men. Relationships take work and require vulnerability. And if you aren’t putting it in, they go away. For men in particular they aren’t encouraged to have close/intimate friends in the same way women are. Many of our relationships are also proximity based and as you age you have less low effort ways to meet new people. So join a local club for whatever your interests are; become a regular somewhere; send your friends and family random texts whenever you think about them (my SIL and I literally just snap each other cute dog pics; tell people what’s going on in your life; and listen to what’s happening in theirs.
Young people say things like: “If you’re the one who always reaches out first, you don’t mean that much to them” That’s horseshit. Never be afraid to be the first to reach out to someone you love.
It's not worth it in my opinion to cling to youth looks wise. Accept that there are changes and you're now an older person and stop caring about what others think. I mean this in terms of stuff like wearing ankle socks, parting your hair on the side, etc. It's okay if the kids think you look old. You are old and that's okay. Wear the socks you like.
Wait a minute, wearing ankle socks and parting your hair on the side is a marker for being old?
You killed my dream of middle age crisis and going full on brocoli hair 😢
I took about 15 years off of paying work by staying at home to raise my 5 kids.I don't regret my choice but I wasn't really thinking how it would affect me financially long term. Too many people do that--they stay at home with kids and justify it by saying, "Well daycare costs as much as I'd earn, so I might as well not work." What they don't see is long term. Every year you don't work is one year less of your income, retirement account, & social security benefits. I divorced my abusive ex after 25 years so that harmed me economically too. I'm a teacher and have a good pension package (I hope) within about 5 years but I do need to work until I'm in my late 60s. As you get older, you just don't have the same energy; working in a physically demanding job in your 60s really really sucks. I have back aches & knee aches every day. And I'm in very good shape. I guess what I'm saying is to recognize your mortality and that your earning potential affects your life long term not just short term. It comes up much much sooner than you think it will. Think very seriously about your retirement; don't kick the can down the road.
Remember at 21 when you would work out really hard, or play a double header in softball? Remember the way you felt the next day until you recovered? I'm 65. I feel like that all the time. It's just the new normal.
Time flies when you don't do anything. Why do people say the years whiz by faster as you get older? Because people are locked into their routines, either by choice (usually) or out of necessity (occasionally). Routines are good but doing the same thing every day means you'll look back and wonder what happened to all that time. Lots of us experienced this during COVID lockdowns. Stay active, both physically and mentally. Do new things. Get out of your comfort zone. Seek novelty. If you just go to work, come home, veg out and watch Netflix, and then do it again 3,000 times, no kidding it'll feel like ten years flew by. Nothing interesting happened! And there will be a lot, A LOT, of people who are hostile to this idea, who get defensive and immediately start moralizing or explaining or justifying their own inaction. Too much work, ugh the bills, house needs fixin', kids, etc. Not all of those things can be avoided, and nobody likes to feel like they're responsible for anything lacking in their life. But ultimately you choose your own path. Keep it interesting.
Female stuff: That perimenopause can start way earlier than you think. Like, in your early to mid 30s. It's not just hot flashes and missed periods. It's a whole constellation of symptoms that might be subtle. Loss of estrogen is serious and causes all sorts of issues. Listen to Dr. Mary Claire Haver. Fascinating stuff! Also, the 1000 different ways I didn't take care of myself in my 20s and 30s is starting to manifest itself now that I'm in my mid 40s. This shit is REAL. Seriously. On the flip though, all the things I started in my 20s (hot yoga mostly) is really paying off now. And, I can't stress this enough, MOVE. You have to move. I'm not talking about working out necessarily. I'm talking about movement. Walk, stretch, squat. Lift something heavier than your phone and car keys daily. For the love of God, take care of your muscles and get yourself strong. "Skinny" won't help you when you're my age. Same with being obese. A ray of hope: Getting older isn't something to be afraid of. I'd rather be in my 40s than in my 20s pr 30s any day. It's completely awesome not giving a fuck about what others think of you anymore. *I* care what I think of me. I live for myself and my family now and it's a huge relief.
You can't depend on your kids or other family to help you out financially. It isn't necessarily because they don't want to, but they may not be financially able to. Plan NOW for those later years.
Women don’t expire at 30.
You'll live longer than you think. Save some money.
Trauma from abuse does have a cost. It comes from within your body. Get heart healthy Eat well And keep moving even if you're slow.
Physical health, there’s something called health expectancy which is around 55, after that you will need medical help. You don’t need to be a pro athlete but keep yourself relatively healthy and fit.
Aging can happen suddenly, you get one illness or injury that cripples you, forces you to change your diet/habits, threatens your life. That thing may very well kill you eventually and its not clear when. Everyone thinks it won't happen to them, but it's the exact opposite, it happens to almost everyone, it's just a question of when.
I was diagnosed with cancer at 52 four years ago. I was considered low risk. Before then, I was a healthy middle-aged person without any chronic conditions or medication needs. Physically, I could do whatever I wanted and generally felt good. People often mistook me for being in my 30s. However, cancer treatment aged me 20 years. I have neuropathy in my feet from chemo so things like running and even walking can be painful or hazardous (I've fallen hard 3 times and broke my elbow once). The medication I take to keep recurrence at bay has a number of side-effects including thinning bones, hair, constant low-grade muscle and joint pain, and insomnia. I now have one of those giant pillboxes your grandmother used to tote around when she traveled. Exercise is a must now or else I quickly lose strength and muscle tone. I can't move like I used to. I move a lot slower. Mentally it's been difficult adjusting because I was used to having a body that was strong and could do what I wanted it to. Instead of aging at a slower pace over decades, I did it all in the course of a year. A therapist once told me that aging is an accumulation of disminishments. It just happens a lot faster for some than others.
Something is eventually gonna require you to have really good insurance. Failing organ, cancer, weird hard to diagnose ailment, freak skin allergy, teeth problems... take care of your health as much and as often as possible. Set yourself up to have as much financial agency during medical issues as you can. Eventually something is going to hit hard and that cushion could ultimately save your life.
Nothing is forever. Relationships, jobs, hometowns, your health…. It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into things, it all changes and can go away in a blink of the eye. Behold my works yea mighty and despair…. You can’t keep friends or family from dying. Other people’s lives diverge from yours and they move on. Values will change. Fads will leave you behind. Your opinion will count less. Your favorite restaurant can close down, your city can decay, entire neighborhoods disappear…. And younger people won’t ever know the difference, much less care like you do. Your body can, and eventually will betray you. Every joke or mean thing you ever said about old people will come back, and you will regret your stupidity even as you wish you were still ignorant of the indignities of age. You start to really understand (not just know intellectually, but feel it), that not only are you NOT the center of the Universe, but that your life WILL end… and the world will still keep spinning. Life will go on without you, just as it always has, and always will. Sometimes that will be hard to take; Other times, it will give you peace of mind.
There are many lonely elderly people. Be kind and helpful.
Travel when you’re young. As you get older, you don’t want to leave your house, your bed, and most importantly, your bathroom.
When your first parent dies, it’s a reality check.
cancer does not give a shit how old you are. You might think. Hey I am in my mid 20s theres zero chance I have cancer. Cancer do s not care if you are 5 or 50. Might not necessarily be a sobering reality of aging. But as you get older you start realising how short life is and how fast it can end.
The reward for living healthy is living longer.
You won’t notice your own cognitive decline.
Every single thing about you deteriorates. Brain, hair, skin, arteries, tendons, vibes, eyes, retnas, tear ducts, memory, taste, friends and family... like termites in an old house. Also those people that live to 100 generally aren't having a good time. My sister wants to live to 100 and after taking care of my parents for 12 years while they went through dementia and broken hips and fucked up systems I'm like oh hell no. Watching everyone you know fall apart and die isn't fun either.
One thing I’m noticing that I had not thought of is how much my parents have aged. It’s scary.
A lot of us actual boomers find things slow down in terms of new interests and the depth of social engagements/relationships. Some people have a plan to take up the slack with other things, often grandchildren. If you haven’t made a plan for how to deal with this what you experience might be described by some as loneliness. This lack of engagement picks up momentum if you don’t interrupt the pattern of thinking that leads to this behaviour. The best way to fight back is to attack it cognitively. Learning to adjust your POV and how you frame things, can have a veery good effect. See Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT. It works fast. So be aware of this element in your preps for aging. Oh, and make some effort to contribute monthly, appropriate to your earnings, to a retirement plan. You will need the money for sure.
Two sobering possibilities: 1. you may not live as long as you should. 2. You might live *longer* than you should. One of my parents did everything right. Healthy food, exercise, maintained relationships, positive mindset, saved for retirement. Got cancer and got to spend their one year of retirement dying. The universe isn’t fair. My other parent did everything wrong. Smoking, drinking, bad diet, no exercise, let friendships fall by the wayside, goofed off, no savings, retired early on a small fixed income, reverse mortgaged their home. Not a bad person, was actually a good parent, just did not take care of themselves because they didn’t think they would live into old age for some reason. This one is still alive, and most of their time and limited energy is spent on doctors appointments, tests, painful surgeries and recoveries. They have no savings and will have to leave their home soon. Live your life, take care of yourself. Part of it will be luck and circumstances, but part of it is up to you. Don’t depend on having time later in life to do things you’ve put off, but on the other hand don’t write checks - literally or metaphorically - that you can’t cash.
Your body simply doesn't do all the things you took for granted 20 years ago. Sprint to the shops for fun? Nope. Climb over the fence and jump down the other side? Nope. Go all day and pee once? Nope. Hear conversations in a crowded room? Nope. See the stage clearly from the back of the hall? Nope. Rarely ever visit a pharmacy? Nope. Kneel down to pick up something from under the bed and jump back up again? Nope. Remember the name of the person who bought your car last year? Nope. Enjoy your youth, and plan for when it's passed! Edit: for formatting.
My boy asked me how my pain tolerance was so high. I told him. "That's my secret; I'm always in pain."
Your health and fitness are not givens. After a certain age, you have to chase after that stuff. When you're young you can just do nothing and if you're not actively injuring yourself or eating like you've entered a competition for Youngest Heart Attack Ever, you'll be okay. After about age 40 or so, you have to balance exercising enough to improve (or even maintain) your health and fitness, while so being super careful not to get injured because injuries will sideline you for longer than you think and may never heal properly. Stretching and strength training are important. Don't just do cardio.
Nighttime driving starts to suck really bad.
I’m 62. I got in an elevator today. Just as the doors were closing the loudest fart rumbled out of me. I had zero warning it was coming. AND, I hadn’t eaten all day so I have no idea where it came from. I was mortified for the other two in the elevator, especially the lady who immediately moved away from me. I just pretended it didn’t happen. 🤦♀️ Aging is so fun.
Your brain may think it can. Your motivation may think it can push you. But sometimes, your body just can’t do what you want it to do anymore.
1. Move it or lose it. You have to keep moving, walking, standing up and sitting down. If your shoulder hurts, exercise it. If your knee hurts, exercise it, don't baby your long term injuries because that compounds over time and you can lose total motion or end up in an electric scooter. If you are an able bodied person make sure you keep moving. It's really bad when you don't. 2. Don't diet, change your lifestyle. Eat generally healthy food with small meat portions and lots of vegetables that you make at home and cheat once in a while. (Pizza night, fried chicken night) Eating fast food and takeout every day is both bad for your health and for your wallet. 3. Hang out with people who like to cook and eat at home and are generally active. You will be more likely to have a healthier lifestyle if the people around you have healthier lifestyles.
This is always hard for people to understand. My wife and I like to stay home. Please stop trying to shame us to "get out" more. She is happy playing slots on her computer. I'm happy to go out , do the weekly shopping and cruising the internet when I'm done. No, I don't want to babysit the great-grand kids, go see parades or go to the beach. Forget the fire works on the 4th, seen them enough when the kids were small. Not going to go to the great-grand kids soccer, football, baseball games. They have grand-parents to do that. Post some pictures we can see on FB. When we decline invites to parties or get togethers don't get angry, we don't need the drama that comes with it. We understand you're busy, we were too when we were your age. We have 3 daughters, 6 grandkids and 9 great-grandkids. If we go to anything for one and not the other , we are accused of playing favorites . We will go to family gatherings, stay a few hours and head home before dark. We are happy and content with each other, after all, we just had our 56th anniversary. We enjoy the peace and tranquility of taking care of each other as best we can.