This is what I thought too. I understand what the OP means to convey, I think-- more to the effect of “how would your younger self feel betrayed by your older self”. But most, if not all of these examples, seem like growth and / or natural changes & concessions due to the nature of aging.
And you know what? Screw my younger self. My younger self betrayed my older self! I was too self-righteous in some ways, too sure that I was right and the older generation was wrong, too eager to pursue short-term gratification at the expense of my future. I am what I am today in spite of my younger self, not because of him.
I was also very into books when I was younger. I spent hours poring through dusty old used book stores. But today I love my eBook. I have an entire library of classics that fits into the palm of my hand, and can download more at any time, instantly!
Another example of ‘betraying my younger self’ would be: 30+ years ago I liked to camp in the woods. We didn’t backpack, it was just car camping, but we’d go to pretty remote locations in Michigan’s U.P., and stay at rustic campgrounds with nothing but a picnic table and a fire pit. So we felt like we were roughing it pretty good. We had a code that we needed to stay as primitive as possible. We were contemptuous of the older campers who used chainsaws to cut up their firewood. Look how soft they are! We’ll never resort to a chainsaw! We’d spend hours of hard sweaty work cutting up wood with a collapsible camping saw. Guess what I never forget to bring when I go camping now?
During my childhood and early teens, I honestly believed that most people were “good” and only “some” were bad. When I was 16, that began to drastically change. Now, I believe all people are of one nature, and “good” or “bad” depends on environment, circumstances, and opportunity. In other words, I’ve lost a significant amount of faith in humanity over time.
My younger self would have been dismayed by my current attitude towards sex. It used to be the central driving force in my life, to the extent that I couldn’t imagine living without it.
Over the last couple of decades, my testosterone levels seem to have gone down significantly, and I’m delighted by the sense of freedom and ease that has emerged. A lot of other pleasures have become more appreciated, and I’m feeling quite satisfied. It’s similar to a shift for me in wanderlust - after a lifetime of travel and worldly experience, I really don’t crave it any more, there’s plenty of pleasure closer to hand now.
I’ve done one thing that a younger me would not have comprehended: I burned some books. The books were a set of children’s stories with a strong religious slant, published in the 1950s. As a kid I read them many times, but as I got older they came to repulse me. I held on to them for years, because they were so old it seemed a shame to let them go, but I didn’t want to put them in the hands of some other impressionable kid. One day, when my husband was burning yard debris and I was cleaning the house, my eye fell on those books, and I was ready to let them go. Poof!
I was very prudish and self-righteous about sex when I was younger. Even when I was in college, and many of the people around me were actively having sex, I maintained (and sometimes told people very smugly) that the first time that I would have sex would be on my wedding night.
Suffice it to say, that did not end up being true. I look back, and I’m amazed at how prissy and judgemental I could be. It’s a wonder that I had any friends at all. I’m sure my younger self would be scandalized at my current attitudes about sex. But screw younger me. That guy was a jerk.
As the OP notes, reading is a big one. I was a voracious reader as a kid, as a teenager, and as a younger adult. Somewhere along the last 20 years, I started to read less, and now, I rarely sit down and read a book. I have a stack of at least a half-dozen books sitting here, partially read, which I’ve been meaning to finish, but just don’t get around to it.
A second one is my interest in football. Growing up in Green Bay, I became a huge Packer fan, and that endured for a long time. In the last decade, I’ve grown disenchanted with the sport, partially due to the NFL’s absolute pursuit of every possible angle to make a buck, and partially due to the tremendous physical toll it takes on its players (particularly head trauma and CTE).
Finally, as a young person, my career goal was to go into meteorology; from about age 6 to age 17, I wanted to be a television meteorologist. As I was applying to colleges, I talked myself out of it, due to how much high-level math and physics was required for a degree. I went into marketing, and eventually moved into advertising, but as the years have gone on, I’ve become increasingly unhappy with my career choice, and often think about the road not taken.
I don’t know how old you are, but now in my late 60s I must be living my life in reverse order from most people. I completely skipped my teens and twenties socially. And my middle ages had nil travel due to family obligations.
So now I’m making up for lost time like a banshee. It’s all lust and all wanderlust all the time. But now armed with an appreciation of those finer things too. And a bigger budget. And no pesky job occupying any of my time or energy.
Sure, I get more tired more faster than e.g. 25yo me would have under the same circumstances. But I’m still goin’ at it as hard as physiology permits. I’ll quit all this when I’m forced to, and not a minute before.
A) I agree, and B) so did Plato about 2,500 years ago. In the first page or two of Republic, one of the characters recalls what Sophocles had told him about it:
…most gladly have I escaped this thing you talk of, as if I had run away from a raging and savage beast of a master.
The speaker, Cephalus, goes on to to say,
I thought it a good answer then, and now I think so still more. For in very truth there comes to old age a great tranquility in such matters and a blessed release. When the fierce tensions of the passions and desires relax, then is the word of Sophocles approved, and we are rid of many and mad masters.
Also here but it’s the exact opposite of betrayal..
Younger me was absolutely “involuntary celibate” into my late twenties. Not only not having any kind of romantic partner but hardly even knowing anyone of the opposite sex, so not really having any realistic hope of getting one.
I do have real sympathy for “incels”. I never made the logical leap from not having any hope of having a romantic relationship to it being women’s fault that I don’t have any hope of a romantic relationship. But then I didn’t have the “manosphere” telling me that
Now I have a very pretty wife (way out of my league on every level) and a healthy sex life. I even went through a brief stage in my thirties, when I was a young-ish not hideously unattractive tech guy in San Francisco* with my own apartment, of being a “desirable property” where women would pursue me.
My younger self would not even dare to dream that might be the case some day. He’d probably forgive old me for betraying him about electronic music and communist politics when he discovered that
‘*’ - my personal (possibly unpopular) theory is that a lot of the inclination towards polyamory and other complicated sexual relationships in San Francisco is because of the number of guys in a similar situation. Where they went from being weird unpopular nerds who didn’t even talk to girls, to suddenly being a well off tech guy and being in demand, and having no idea how to deal with it. That’s my 0.02$ FWIW
I’ll get to betrayals or non-betrayals later, but first:
I lived in the fairly close-in (by today’s standards, at least) Virginia 'burbs through most of my post-college 20s. And I’d frequently see movies at DC’s assorted repertory theaters, especially the Circle, and I always had one of those 10-ticket books. I must’ve seen the Harold and Maude/King of Hearts twin bill there two or three times. Also the Biograph and the Key, though I think most of my visits to the Key were for midnight showings of Rocky Horror. Such memories! Madness takes its toll.
Maybe not a betrayal, but a road not taken. When I was just out of University I was interested in music and electronics, and had dreams of becoming a music engineer / producer. The next George Martin…
But I never pursued it seriously. I should probably have tried to get an entry-level job at somewhere like the BBC to build up credentials as an audio engineer. But somehow I got sidetracked into programming and software engineering… interesting enough at times but not my passion.
Financially I’m probably better off than I would have been, unless I’d been lucky enough to get involved with one or more acts who really hit the big time…
Ha, is it even camping when you bring a chain saw? Sarcasm, obviously.
In my case, as a determined pychonaut - I considered going back to school to learn organic chemistry in order to synthesize, uhm, chemicals of dubious legality.
Now in my early 50s, I have a legal cannabis chocolate… and it has been sitting unused on a table next to my bed for several months.
When I was growing up (from the time I learned to read to my early 30s at least), books were undoubtedly central to my identity. On average I read a book a day throughout my childhood. My stepfather actually used to punish me by prohibiting me from reading non-school books for a week or so at a time (which I could get around pretty easily—and really just taught me to be contemptuous of authority).
But somewhere along the way, starting around the time of the rise of the web in the ‘90s (including joining the SDMB in 2000—which I found having read The Straight Dope books in the ‘80s and early ‘90s), along with graduate school, work, and getting more busy with life and bills and yard work and travel planning, I kind of fell out of the habit of reading books—especially novels.
To this day, though, I say if I were to ever become bedridden or incarcerated or stranded on a desert island—so long as I had access to books—I would be fine since I could catch up on my reading backlog. I tell myself I will get back to reading when I retire or get too old to do other activities.
Back in the late 80’s/early 90s when I was in my late teens and 20s I only wore Levi’s blue jeans, either 505s or 501s. Other than the pants for the suit I wore to weddings and funerals nothing else was in my closet. I could not see myself wearing any other brand. They fit good and lasted a long time. In my late 20s I got a job in a factory and soon discovered the work was doing a number on my Levi’s and dropping $35 for a new pair every couple of months was getting expensive. Plus, I think the quality of the Levi’s were going down as sometimes the material seemed thinner. And as I was always a 32X32 I never had to try a pair on pair to see if they fit, I soon discovered that even though the tag said 32X32, not all pairs fit the same.
Bought cheaper jeans for work and then, after getting married, my wife bought other brands for me. I still have a couple of pairs of “nice” Levi’s in the closet but other brands outnumber them. At age 16-26 I thought I would never, ever wear anything other than Levi’s, but I betrayed my younger self later by buying other brands.
With respect to political beliefs, my younger self had “libertarian tendencies” but it wasn’t all that well thought out. For example, for some assignment when I was a teenager we had to write a letter to our state representative about a political issue that interested us, and I wrote protesting the seatbelt law that had recently been enacted on the guise that the government had no right to tell citizens what to do for their personal safety.
I was also anti-gun control—so much so that I was essentially a single-issue voter regarding the issue—and voted solely for Republicans because of this from the time I could vote through the 2000 presidential election. I was a member of the NRA, and contemplated donating enough to become a “life member” (but thankfully never did).
But I was also pro-choice, and even wore a “Republicans for Choice” button in college in the ‘80s back before the parties became so polarized on the issue. I was pro-environment, but so were many Republicans at the time, and the fact that Nixon had established the EPA was still fresh in everyone’s minds.
But as I got older, I became more liberal and progressive on almost every issue. I’ve come to realize that limits on gun control are necessary. (And the NRA itself went from opposing supposedly “extreme” and overbearing gun-control measures to rejecting all gun-control measures, however commonsensical.) Indeed, I’ve rejected virtually all libertarian tenets. Among other things, I now think there should be a social safety net for everyone.
(On that note, it’s stricking how many members of the military who are conservative Republicans—not to mention the Republicans in Congress—who are vehemently against the taxpayers paying for any social benefits like healthcare or disability insurance for the undeserving general public—but who themselves receive lifetime healthcare and pensions at taxpayer expense. What hypocrisy! But of course, they are convinced they have “earned these benefits.”)
(And the Republicans themselves have gone ludicrously to the right in recent years, rejecting not just environmental protection but the free markets, civil liberties, etc. And now with the MAGA movement towards authoritarianism and fascism.)
I’m still wearing the same type of Levi’s blue jeans (either 550s or 501s) along with the same line of New Balance running shoes (990 series) that I have been wearing since I was 13 years old (over 40 years now). I’ve owned hundreds of pairs of jeans over that time, and dozens of pairs of shoes.
New Balance upgrades the model every 2-3 year so (from the original 990 to 991 up through 999, then back to 990 again), and I have gone through the whole cycle two or three times. The shoes are expensive but high quality, and they are good for my flat, narrow, pronating feet. I save money by buying 3 or 4 pairs of the older model right when the new model comes out.
And I have had a continuous subscription to Analog Science Fiction & Fact since then, though I am way behind in reading them.
I read a fair amount, but nothing compared to how much I used to read. It’s difficult because nowadays there are so many competing options - not just the required ones, or family time, but this vast repository of entertaining things to do on my phone/computer etc. Sitting down and reading a book requires a different muscle, and that muscle can atrophy if not used.
And oftentimes, when I’m not reading, I’m writing fiction, which counts, but more often than not I have to choose one over the other. For this reason, my reading kind of goes in cycles. When I’m reading, I’m reading 4-5 books in a row. When I’m writing, I’m not reading.
Still, I know I could read more if I weren’t so distracted all the time.
Also the Biograph and the Key, though I think most of my visits to the Key were for midnight showings of Rocky Horror. Such memories! Madness takes its toll. 