Bonus panel:
I'm in my 30's and I still don't feel like an adult. I always feel like I'm mimicking what someone my age should be, and then when I go home, it's like, "finally, away from all those scary adults."
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
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40s reporting in. It doesn't change, I feel like I've been perpetually 20-ish.
Another in their 40's, reporting same.
My step father, at 77 said to me "you never feel old in your head. I'm an 18yr old in a 70yr old body".
That's a ratio of 4.2, maybe our brains actually stop functioning at 327.6 years old? Body just blows up first?
Our bodies typically cease to function around 80, so yes. We will all be dead much sooner than we would like
Welcome to adulthood.
So there's this commonly stated thing about ageing which is that we perceive each day of our lives not as a day, but as being the size of the fraction of our lives a day represents. Or more simply, a day is as long for a 5-year-old as two days are for a 10-year-old and so on.
With that in mind, and knowledge of a little mathematics, our lives viewed this way aren't linear, but logarithmic, and it means that we reach middle age not at 40-something but at something on the order of the square root of our life expectancy.
Looked at this way, we've lived far more than half our lives by the time we're ten, even if we expect to live to be a hundred.
No wonder so many of us feel like children. Or act like them.
The way you perceive time is based on your state of mind, not your age. My perception of time hasn't gotten faster as I age. It's gotten faster and then slower depending upon my lifestyle and my mindset.
I think it's less about perception of time as you're experiencing it right now.
Like, a month to me right now feels much MUCH shorter than a month when I was a kid. Much more when we talk about years. But an hour is still going to be as long or as short as it wouldve been whether or not I'm doing something.
That's what I'm telling you. A month feels like a month, a year feels like a year. When people say "OMG! I can't believe that 2005 was 20 years ago!" or something like that, I think "Yes, that feels about right."
I never understand those kinds of posts. It makes me concerned that so many people have such a loose grasp of the passage of time.
It is because their lives are too boring and uneventful? Is it because their life is very hectic with constant responsibility?
I see comments about x being y years ago "do you feel old now", and all I can think is that even covid feels like a lifetime ago and that was only a few years ago.
There are studies that show that our brains like to automate routines and habits. For example, when I had a job that was 1 hour away from where I lived, at first that hour of driving felt like an eternity, but after a year of making that drive I would start to day dream and then suddenly I would be there without much memory of driving.
Out of curiosity, how old are you?
Between 35 and 45
Interesting, I’m similarly in that range and I can definitely perceive the difference in the passage of time relative to when I was younger.
If you look at my comment, I'm taking about the inability to recognise how long ago familiar things have happened, specifically not realising that something familiar happened a long time ago.
Do you find yourself being surprised that things you are familiar with happened when they happened rather than happening much more recently? Have you not noticed that a year passes nearly every 365 days?
Idk what your struggle with relativism is here but I have noticed that 365 days a year happens every year.
I learned that by the time I was in school.
None of us are ignorant to how many days are in a year, we’re referring to the perception of time.
As you age time feels as if it goes faster, you have experienced more and so relatively time is passing in smaller increments relative to your overall life but taken on the whole they appear more condensed.
People feeling as if distant events are more recent is not uncommon, we aren’t broken, and you’re being awfully weird about it.
we reach middle age not at 40-something but at something on the order of the square root of our life expectancy.
So my midlife crisis car was actually an RC car? 🤯
I always felt I am mentally 16. Can a 16 year old do adult stuff? Yeah, could probably trust them with instructions and stuff. Should you? Fuck no, stop asking them to be an adult! I don't think I'll ever feel adulty.
I feel like only my body has aged since I was 14. Internally, I feel exactly the same as I did as a teenager.
The other day, I cracked open a tote of some high school papers and keepsakes that I haven't laid eyes on in 15 years. Found a notebook inside where I wrote these yearly journal entries of big takeaways and thoughts I had each NYE starting as a freshman.
What I wrote as a freshman at 14, right down to my exact handwriting, I could have written yesterday. What really hit me was how well I had summarized my entire psyche in wide-ass crayola marker. Like shit, I couldn't have said it more succinctly myself, self.
Are we indeed the same people we were in those "Stand by Me" years and the added baggage of aging and externally changing has only served to complicate us, to easily confuse ourselves with what we do? Is continually adding to the sum total of our lived experiences even helpful if some of us have already lost ourselves to a heap of internalized hardship?
But who am I now if I am not also what I have lived?
...
Yeah im all good here just another civilian casualty of shock and awe ruminating the night away 👈😎👉
Do you ever feel like aging is socially isolating? When I was 18 I could chat with literally anyone and it was almost always well received. But the older I get, the more socially isolated I am starting to feel. It feels like younger people want nothing to do with people older than them, even at places like climbing gyms... Which I understand, but it still makes me a little sad. I am not expecting to be good friends with any of them, but being able to chat and be friendly with other adults makes life less depressing.
I think the lack of shared culture is also making life far more socially isolating. When I meet people my own age at a social event, it is becoming harder and harder to chat with them. I don't watch sports, I don't keep up with the latest movies, and I hate consumerism. My dream is to live in a car free community with a social democracy. I love learning, urbanism and socialism. But there is scarcely anyone my age in any of the local socialist organizations....
Poofy hair is useful when your hair is thinning.
At certain a age you have to get creative to protect the sensitive skin on your head from the 🌞.
Usually that's a wide-brim hat, especially after the last wispy vestiges of your hair cross the rainbow bridge.
I remember hair...
You know, I was actually going to ask why short hair on elderly women was so common. I had just assumed it was a remnant of their preferences from when they were younger, but I can definitely see trying to maximize thinned out hair!
This is really healthy to accept and admit.
Hey, why are you depicting my everyday feeling?
Is the kid version pulling on a pony tail or pushing up a stick?
They're using a stick to hold up the facade of adulthood
Thanks
For me it's self-respect. If you learn to treat yourself with enough respect you are already filling out a huge portion of the adult form.
Maybe it's full, round and healthy growth in general that helps..
Same, absolutely! I'm always afraid grownups are gonna figure out that's what I'm doing.