What's the best and worst thing about getting old or older?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not going to define “old” or “older” – this is just more a question about the physical and mental aging process. What are the experiences that you assign to just being around a long (longer) time? What “we” - has animals that understand mortality, our status in society, and in family, view our aging. This is a question about what each one of us might experience as we age.

So, for those who have a philosophy to share – what is it? We know there’s a physical decline. In some - there’s a mental decline. Yet, we know that, in some at least, there’s the acquisition of ‘wisdom’ – which makes up for and allows the person to reconcile most anything. In others, there’s a irreconcilable mental decline and even the loss of friends through attrition.

So tell some of us your philosophy of aging — is aging mostly an overall decline – or is life all about ‘a work in progress?’

2

I was never much of an athlete, so I don’t mourn the erosion of my physical skills too much.

What I’ve gained is a lot of experience and a lot of perspective.

Overall, I’d say it’s a positive.

3

heh…lots of reads, not a lot of posts. Anyone nervous?

–“Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgement.”

Pushing 40 here. Piebald old man to some, whippersnapper to others. I agree that the best thing is the perspective you get just from being around and seeing things in this crazy mixed up world. Everyone forms opinions, beginning at around age 1. If you keep your eyes open it’s impossible to not change them (your opinions that is, you are stuck with the eyes you have for now) as you acquire experience.

Worst part is that change becomes wearying, for me at least. As I get older I find I simply don’t enjoy the chaos that surrounded me in my youth, nor am I willing to move my residence so lightly–more baggage and kids and all, sure, but more importantly is my growing aversion to change in my personal life. Maybe this is tied to an unconscious awareness of my impending mortality–I’m running out of time and must stop fooling around.

Philosophically however, that’s rubbish. If one is running out of time, it’s time to START fooling around because there’s less chance of it catching up to you before you die! :smiley:

4

Well, I don’t know how wise I am, but you are right in that I find I am indeed able to “reconcile” many things about life much more easily than when I was younger. In my case, I’ve become more philosophical and forgiving as I’ve gotten older, and I believe I’m more able to recognize the things in life that are truly important. As a result, I’m less inclined to get worked up over things that at one time I would gotten quite worked up over simply because I realize now that they don’t really matter in the overall scheme of things.

Well, as that wise and philosophical sage Jerry Lewis once said (on Larry King, I believe), “Every age has its compensations.” In other words, there are rewards in each stage of life that largely serve to counter-balance the loss of other things that you found rewarding earlier in life. You can see this for yourself if you look back over your own life. Things that were vastly important to you at the age of eight seem silly and inconsequential at the age of twenty, when you have matured and acquired more sophisticated interests and concerns. Similarly, many of the things that seem so earth-shatteringly important at twenty no longer seem like that big a deal when you’re forty. You have matured and developed other, more sophisticated, interests and concerns. And so on and so on.

5

Negatives:
*Hot young chics pretty much of limits (either because of your morals, or lack of “pull” - you pick)

  • Stuff hurts.
  • Slower recovery - from drinking, injuries, illness. It all seems to take twice as long
  • Cynicism tends too build, and you lose a little of the sense of wonder.

Positives:

  • You know shit. It takes half the time it used to, to do most anything, because you now know the best way how.
  • You’re les gullible, waste less time on wild goose chases.
  • You have to put up with less crap, because of having more money/experience or “gravitas”
  • You have an easier time focusing on what’s important, an appreciate it more.

I’m 37. I’d instantly go back to being 18 if offered, even if I didn’t get the “knowing then what I know now” option. That being said, life is great, and I don’t mind getting older all that much.

6

Best-Financial. Kids are educated, you have moved up the economic ladder, and the worries about how the light bill is going to get paid are a thing of the past.

Worst-Around age 50, some of your friends start dying with cancer or similar stuff. Your grandparents and parents are no longer here. Even if your own health is good, these things are bitter pills to swallow.

7

Everthing Isosleepy said… and I’ll add a few: (I’m 32)

Positive:

  • Wider range of females available. (Generalizing of course) When your 22… older than 26 women would think your just a kid. Your basically limited to women aged 16-24. Being 32 means you can have a chance from the 22-24 range up to the aged 36 range and sometimes more. (Being picky of course). I do know a very hot 38 year old… so there are many more “eligible” women.
  • You know how to have sex… you can attempt to please women instead of having premature ejaculations of your former youth.
  • Women require (not all of course) less Bullshitting before they go to bed with you. “Older” women know what they want and they dispense the “formalities” much quicker.
  • Money… and more independence.

Negative:

  • Isosleepy said it all… you just can’t run after the young chicks as much… we don’t look like party animals even if we feel like we are.

  • Body gets a bit stiff… work is not recommended if you want to be healthy.

  • 2nd erection takes too long to happen… :slight_smile: So you only get one chance to do it right. (which helps create the positive point above.)

  • Women our age aren’t as hot as they used to be body wise…

    Do notice that the sex part seems the most relevant to me… so I must be a bit sexually deviant ? Or perhaps the physical losses haven’t hit me as bad. I’m not bald and I don’t have white hair or a tummy.

8

Best thing about getting older - it beats the alternative.

9

Things that suck about getting older…

Memory loss.

I just came hack from holidays with my father, who is 78 and losing his short-term memory. This majorly sucks, because memory is the key to maintaining identity and will.

My father can’t remember things anymore without an extensive effort by others around him to weave them into a pattern that he will gradually adjust to. But ask him whether the nurse showed up today, and he will answer yes, and you have no idea whether she did or not because he previously said no to the same question.

My father wanted to quit smoking, but couldn’t remember that he had the intention. A couple of years ago I had to go get him in Emergency because he had ODed on drugs because he couldn’t remember whether he’d taken them, or not…

Everything else in his life–his frailty and ailments, the unfamiliar controls of the satellite receiver, his new specially-designed-for-the-elderly home–could be managed, but it’s the memory loss that turns it into an ordeal.

He doesn’t go out anymore, even when people offer to take him. Not even to the harbour five blocks away… and he’s an old Navy man.

It’s heart-breaking. :frowning:

10

My mother always used to say: Grow Old Tactfully.

I never truely got it until one of my colleagues came up to me and asked:…So…how do you do it? You seem to not let the world and the affairs of everything going wrong effect your day to day personality…

If there is one thing I have learned in my 35 years on this planet, it’s that I only have one life to live, and unless you know otherwise, so do you. So try and live life to the fullest, learn a new hobby each year, teach yourself something everyday, and try to see life with a perspective you can call your own, and not through the eyes of someone else.

Never live vicariously.

11

I’ll start with the worst, since there are fewer of them. (I’m 31, for perspective):

I don’t recover from less sleep as easily as I used to. In college, staying up all night wasn’t that big a deal. I was sleepy but otherwise okay. Now, I feel like I was run over by a Mack truck all the next day. I’m still a night person if left to my own devices, however.

Overall aches and pains don’t go away as quickly.

Weight loss is much more difficult to achieve.

Best:

I’m much more confident. I care less what other people think than I did when I was younger.

I’m more patient. Things don’t bother me like they used to, and I’m more willing to let things go.

I can see some mistakes and correct for them before I make them. Some of those come from making the mistakes in the past; others come from seeing other people make them.

People take me more seriously, at least some times. We went on our honeymoon when we were young, 20 and 21, and we both looked young. People treated us like kids, tried to take advantage of us, and in general, had little respect for us. It left a bad impression on us. The experiences are different now that we’re in our 30s. We get treated like adults. Now, if we walk into a more upscale place dressed in t-shirt and shorts, some snobs still treat us poorly. But they don’t get our business, and I’m comfortable with that, too.

Money. I don’t mind being poor. I can’t say I liked it, but it’s not as if I spent all my time lamenting the fact that I couldn’t afford certain things. But now I can afford to eat expensive foods (like crab legs and steak) at least once a week, have the temperature in the house set to whatever I feel like, and buy lots of fun things to play with. I’m not rich by any means, but I’m very far from poor.

12

I find it the opposite. When you’re a teenager or in your early twenties, most people of the opposite sex (or same sex if that’s your thing) are theoretically available. But by the time you get into your late twenties and thirties, the best ones will have settled into stable relationships.

13

Re: dating…

The teens and early twenties may have more availability, but the early thirties may be the period of greatest flexibility when dating. Forty seems to be a psychological boundary beyond which the prospects for dating go down trememdously. :frowning:

14

Bad Stuff:

  1. Pain becomes one’s companion more and more often.
  2. Staying physically fit requires more effort, as does maintaining a reasonable weight.
  3. Young women become less interested in you unless you are a rich older man.
  4. One tends to be more jaded, suspicious, and cynical.

Good Stuff:

  1. You realize that lots of things that seemed important in your youth really aren’t.
  2. One’s career is established and financial status is higher and more secure than when just starting out.
  3. Lots and lots of memories.
15

Soon to be sixty-five.

Worst thing: Soon to be sixty-five

Best thing: Knowing that very few things really matter and that those things that do matter, don’t matter very much.

16

Bullshit. Spend some time in a nursing home or assisted-living facility and tell me that.

Note to self: Die young.

Damn. Too late.

17

44 years old.

I think the worst would be those hairs that grow out of my ears, damn, I’ve got to trim them almost daily!

18

BMalion to his barber – “Just take a little off the ears.”

OK – at least at 44 you don’t have it growing on your palms – which, I fear, is in my future.

19

The best thing is that your ass disappears. The worst thing is that . . well, your ass disappears.

20

Switch hands occasionally.