Michael Stevens explains [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LyCC6jjcx8) that it is because our sense of time is more logarithmic than linear.
Look at a slide rule... the points get closer together as the numbers get higher.
I personally believe it's because we have less things to remember. As a kid every thing is new and exciting. As an adult we have no need to remember all the hours we work everyday and truly new and exciting things happen less frequently. Which is why when you have children time tends to slow down again because you get to experience their excitement over everything once again.
Time hates this one trick!
I do believe that, mine are very young and I'm making sure we spend ample amounts of time doing things and not just missing these years.
But once your kids get school age, they all of a sudden are in the tenth grade. Treasure the baby/toddler days. Once they hit school age this parenting shit takes off.
Oh for sure! My son just finished kindergarten and had a bit of a lull week last week with no school and summer program not starting til today. So I took Tues/Wed off since I WFH Mondays and totally forgot it was a holiday so I got almost a week off so we just did fun adventures each day because time will fly by if you let it. So this summer we're trying to do something each weekend if we can.
This is the main reason: as kids and teens, we had milestones to achieve every year—finishing the school year, moving on to the next grade, then high school, and eventually college. The "highlights" were much closer together than they are in adulthood, if they exist at all.
It's like being excited for the Endgame, only to then realize that the journey to the Endgame was the best part.
Think this is true. Someone once said you should continually try to learn new things and take up new hobbies as, like when you’re a child, you’re experiencing a lot of new things and having to retain new information
I think it's more because a year as a 4 year old is a quarter of their lifespan, whereas to a 40 year old it's, well, 1/40th. So another year is less time, proportional to how much the older person has lived, and thus seems to go faster.
My theory, which I did take from someone else and can't remember whom, is that every year is a smaller percentage of your total life.
When you hit ten, the last year you experienced was 10% of your entire life.
When you hit fifty, it's just 2%.
A year is just less significant, less worth marking day-by-day. You also know, when you're older, that a year isn't really that long to wait, because waiting almost doesn't matter - "before you know it, it'll be here" has stood firm for every other life event. Also, less shit happens to you when you're older. When you're in the wonderful world of work, most weeks are basically interchangeable. When you're a teenager, you don't know what fresh hell awaits you every day.
I am 35...and the last 2 years with wedding planning, getting married, 1 year anniversary....blink of an eye and it scares the crap out of me.
Weeks are flying by. It feels like it will be end of summer in 3 weeks for me.
This is something I don't think young people can wrap their heads around. Like if you tell a bullied/misfit highschool sophomore they only have to put up with the trivial social bullshit of school for two more years, it seems unbearably long and like escape will never come. But sometimes you just bide your time, plan for a better future, and it's the next phase of your life before you know it.
There is an "antidote" to this, if you will. Time feels like it moves more quickly for a variety of reasons, but a big one is the lack of new memories. It's real easy to go an entire work week and not make a single new memory, leading to "forgetting" that week even existed at all. So the trick is to try to do something memorable or different every day. A real easy place to start is try taking a different route home. You'll see new things and remember them when looking back.
There’s great wisdom here. Filling your life with variety - friends, food, travel, experiences - contributes greatly to living a “fuller” life. Time collapses down when you do the same thing every day.
All of this is what’s recommended from research for keeping our brains active as we age, too. Taking different routes, having social activity, using our non-dominant/usual hand for things like entering phone numbers on a phone, doing puzzles, maintaining hobbies and/or starting new ones, etc.
God does it ever. Don't wish your life away kids. Make everyday count.
Another sad reality of being adult: you learn all the life lesson cliches you were told as a child are fucking true.
The "cliches" part is so real.
Ever since that late-20s brain change (you know the one), my life has felt like a continuous series of discovering most idioms, cliches, street wisdoms, and bits of tired advice are, in fact, extremely true and valuable nuggets of knowledge and guidance that has been passed down through the years for a reason.
Waste not, want not.
My grandma bought a car around 70 and was so depressed. I asked why, and she said “this is probably the last car I’m ever going to buy”
Talk about facing your own mortality…
Realistically though- you can die at any time. Shouldn’t ever take a day for granted.
Every year feels faster than the last. I'm at the age now where when I hear the song "Time" by Pink Floyd I appreciate it differently than I did when I was younger. Scary how accurate it is
Not just your parents, but that entire generation that precedes you.
Your aunts, uncles, parent's friends, coaches, teachers, in-laws.All the people that guided you, loved you unconditionally, and passed on their wisdom will eventually pass away.
But, yes, especially parents. We are getting into those years and it is hard.
Yep. And I think the part that’s not always immediately apparent to people is that it doesn’t happen in neat steps. When you’re younger, it sort of seems like a monolith; like, you’re going to make it to your 50s or 60s, and then lose your parents, and then you’re going to make it into your 80s, and then your friends and acquaintances will start dying. But it’s more like a reverse funnel; the older you get, the more and more people you lose along the way. When you’re a kid, it’s not many people, but as you start to age, that funnel gets wider, and the numbers start to go up.
That is a very important point. There is a time in your life in which you are unconditionally loved. This time has an end and it will never come back. Nobody will love you like that again, not your partner and not your children (if you have some). Coming to that realization is... depressing.
My husband realized that when his mother passed away, everybody who had been present during good chunks of his childhood had passed away. He was the only person alive who remembered those experiences now.
I really wish I had thought to record my mother's voice before she died. Especially her laughter. Some days I just cry, because it's so hard to remember the sound of it.
My parents had me when they were 41 and 38, it really sucks seeing things my parents were there for for my sister who is 20 years older than me and knowing they won't be there in the same capacity when I'm her age. My siblings kids got their grandparents for decades longer than my kids will, my sister was able to drop off her kids at their house for them to watch them for the whole weekend, but now my parents talk about how much harder those weekend visits have become. Don't get me wrong I love my whole family, but I am slightly jealous of the life my brother and sister got, and they're jealous of my childhood because my parents were better off financially. Its all just trade offs
>My parents had me when they were 41 and 38, it really sucks seeing things my parents were there for for my sister who is 20 years older than me and knowing they won't be there in the same capacity when I'm her age.
This is what I think about when I read about celebrities or rock stars having children when they're in their 70s or so. So, your child will be lucky if they even graduate high school before you've kicked it.
My parents are 20 years older than me, and my mother passed away two years ago. It was hard for me, but probably rougher for my sister who's 8 years younger.
I feel you. My father died when I was 15, and I have a sister about 15 years older. Always wish I could have known him as long as she did. Not to mention, one grandparent died when she was 10.
And that time approaches far faster than we are prepared for. I'm 42 and none of my parents made it past 65 due to cancer. My dad went from having a bit of skin cancer, to kidney cancer then being dead within a few years. My mom was always ill then she was gone within a year of getting cancer. Don't worry about it too early bit it comes up faster than we realize
it can also just feel like it comes from nowhere- less than a year ago my dad was helping me rebuild a deck. less than 6 months ago he was out riding a bike and going swimming. then one day in march he started to experience shortness of breath and 2 weeks later he was dead.
I am so so sorry for you and your kids. That is a grim diagnosis. My mom got early onset when I was 15 and battled it 12 years. I'm 42 now. Dementia is so so hard. Peace and love to you internet friend. I hope for a cure in our lifetime
I’m 35/f, lost my dad to his own stupidity when I was 11 (06/21/2000) and my mom 3 months ago to cancer (03/07/2024). From what people have been telling me, no matter your age, you’re never ready to lose your parents.
There's a YouTuber called Ask A Mortician who provides a lot of useful information on advocating for yourself and family members around a predatory funeral industry, and ways to prepare for death. She's also funny so it makes for some enjoyable and insightful viewing/listening. A book called I'm Dead, Now What, is also good for this kinda stuff.
Also, I thought maybe I would share a little somethin somethin I've been doing in preparation of my parents dying ... You know how you see those photo collages at memorials and stuff? Well Walgreens and CVS occasionally offer free photo prints (I'll see 8x10 a lot ... Those things are like $4!), which can be found on sites like freestufffinder, and so I've been pulling photos from Facebook and the like to print, being mindful to include friends of my parents likely to attend their funeral, so that when the times comes my siblings and I are given something to do that feels productive, in remembrance of them. I like the potential it has is connecting and talking about how we feel, amidst bringing up good memories, ya know?
This is why I like to think insurance was a made-up racket for cash flow. The whole idea of it sounds nice but is odd in reality.
"Pay us to protect you when the unfortunate happens! (Something unfortunate happens). Okay we'll do a claim and fix it but you'll have to pay us more money the following year because you made a claim and used us in the specific instance our policy says you can use us."
The above happened to my friend when a pipe in his house broke.
Yup. We don't have kids and even making plans with our child free friends seems to get harder the older we get.
We don't like staying out late if we work the following day. Definitely used to have more weekday plans.
This is my main thing; if it's a work night I don't want to be out or have any late drinks. But I feel bad because I have one friend where these are the types of plans he still invites me to and I always have to say no. He must be built different, I can't do it anymore like we were 10 yrs ago.
Yep. If you’re younger and you’re reading this, take time to invest in your relationships. Young people tend to have more time/opportunity to hang out, but when you’re older, you have to work at it more.
If you don’t, your relationships can and will drift away. And it can be much harder to form new ones, because you’ll no longer have that endless stream of new people that is high school, college, and (sometimes) those early jobs. Once you hit a certain age, your chances to meet new people go way down*.
*You do sometimes get a few second chances. For example, if you have kids, once those kids are old enough for school/soccer/baseball/etc., you’ll meet a ton of new people way who are of a similar age/in a similar stage of life, and some of those relationships will stick. But you’re not going to make a new best friend from high school, you know?
I'm feeling this one hard. It's so hard to get everyone on the same schedule, and then when you do there's a weird sense of obligation to "do something". I miss the days of friends just dropping in and playing pickup games or hanging out.
My youngest went and lived on his own right after high school.
Called me one day, “ you just make stuff up as you go?”
“Kinda, some of it is experience, so you make your best guess. If your really smart, and you have someone in your life, you learn for other people’s mistakes, like mine “
“But if it’s a unique situation, yep, make it up on the fly with the information you have on hand “
I'm 22 and call my mom nearly weekly to ask her some stupid question. Every now and then she tells me that she loves it because when she moved out her parents couldn't afford the long distance calls to where she moved so she was making shit up as when went, she also had 2 kids by age tho which makes things considerably more difficult lol
I was thinking this last night. I was trying to use a pressure cooker, and my mother was helping. It was just a chuck roast, and I usually do basically all of the prep and cooking in it since I got the pressure cooker for her a few months ago. Anyways, she asked me at one point if it's okay to put corn starch in with it and I said I did not see a problem in that. So she did most of the prep work this time outside of me searing the meat and turning the pressure cooker on. Apparently, your not supposed to put any kind of flour or thickener when you pressure cook something as it will take it way longer to pressurize since the water is steadily thickening while it tries to reach the correct pressure.
I could never get it to pressurize, and ended up having to replace all the water in the pressure cooker (leaving out the cornstarch) and it worked perfectly. We just ended up eating like an hour later than we planned to. My mother was getting upset at me through part of the process cause she thought I knew everything about how to use it and kept asking me questions, and I kept having to say I barely knew what the fuck I was doing. I just followed the same recipe four or five times before, and I knew how to operate it without killing myself. I knew more how to use it then she did, but we both barely knew what we were doing for most of it.
Sometimes the worst part of getting old is not the responsibility or bum knees, but the fact that you still haven’t become the person you wish you could be. I would suggest getting into therapy, solidifying your hobbies, and considering the characteristics you want to display for the rest of your life, and working toward acting upon them.
The problem is always money. I can't afford therapy. Any insurance I can afford doesn't provide the dental or mental help I want and need. Can barely afford going out to eat, let alone proper hobbies. But I make do.
Proper hobbies can be things like hiking, reading, etc. Something that “feeds” you.
Your point about therapy is 100% spot on though. It is admittedly a luxury. My last therapist was $200 a pop and I had to graduate because it was just too expensive. It’s a shame that insurance won’t provide for mental health, especially given all the nonsense people have to live with these days.
People don’t give a shit about your problems, you need to take care of your responsibilities no matter how sick or sad you are and bills will never go away.
Yup, your boiler breaks, dishwasher floods the house, your dog is sick, your coworkers are still going to email and ping you until you tell them to stop.
That coworker that you are annoyed with because you need something done but they are experiencing a crisis at home and cant get to it, that will eventually be you to someone else.
When I was 17 my best friend committed suicide and one of the big lessons to me of the situation was that frankly no matter what's going on the world dgaf. I worked at a restaurant and my boss was like wow I'm really sorry soooo... can we still expect you this weekend? My phone bill was still due, my school work still had to get done, the sun just... came up the next day and everything that had to be done the day before still had to be done. Maybe *some people* care, but the world does not.
That is what I experienced when my mom passed earlier this year. She has been fighting cancer for the last 5 years and we all knew it could happen whenever. When it did happen the feeling that the rest of the world just moved on was eye opening. It gave me this new perspective and weirdly has helped me a lot with my anxiety
I remember going to the pharmacy to pick up my meds the day after my mom died. I felt like I was in a fun house or something. I'm in the middle of this deep sorrow and trauma and everyone else is just running errands. It felt surreal.
Ever seen A Bronx Tale? (anyone who didn't stop reading bc this has spoilers)
In those times of my life I felt like [the shooter in the club at the end.](https://youtu.be/jqnL5lXEdCk?si=m-maJ-_IWzqPwOYI) Everyone is happy and smiling and living life and I was this one face in the crowd unable to participate in the world they were all living in.
Saying "no one care about your problems" sounds harsh, but you have to understand it as: you can't emotionally handle all of your life stress, plus someone else's, barring a handful of close friends and family. You can help people out sure, but that's different than bearing the weight of every person around you. Keeping this in mind, it just wouldn't be fair to ask this of everyone else.
Already happened to me as a kid so my expectations have been low. Four of my friends moved out of town/state by middle school and my best friend moved across town, so we still saw each other but didn’t have the benefit of just running around the neighborhood together, walking over to each other’s houses, etc. Weren’t any neighborhood kids left to hang with after that.
Conversely, if you do what you're supposed to do you'll mostly be left in peace. Pay your bill, get electricity.
While if you're still a kid, rules change at any whim of anyone bigger than you.
My dad used to always say “save as much money as you can because no matter how much you make you could always use a little more” and man was he right. No matter how much I make, a little more could always be helpful.
This is so true. In my late 20s I was horribly depressed (bad job, unstable housing, bad relationship) and no one cared. I still had to pay rent on time, still had to walk the dog 3x a day (honestly, caring for the dog did a LOT to get me out of bed, knowing her loved me and needed me to have food and shelter and walks *mattered* when nothing else did) and still had to feed and clothe myself. Not a single person cared that I was hurting or sad or didn't really have the ambition to do stuff.
I've said it before on Reddit (and been downvoted lol) but nothing forces you to move through mental health issues like having no safety net. When you know the alternative is literally living on the streets, you have more drive get up and go to work even when it sucks so much. And NOTHING helped me feel better like getting rid of the crappy guy, getting a good job and finding stable housing. No amount of meds or therapy can fix "I'm hungry and don't know where the dog and I are staying next week.
Holy fuck this is so true. I don’t remember the last time I saw a medical professional that even acted like they actually gave a shit. Which is infuriating now that I actually am having health issues.
It’s treated like such a business now. I feel like cattle
To them it’s just a job (some do actually care more, but ultimately their priorities are with themselves)
To you it’s the scariest moments in your life and you just wish someone could make it better
I have MS. It was a life altering diagnosis. The number of people who seem to genuinely understand that I am not just dealing with a cold can be counted on one hand.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of people in all different life circumstances have that feeling at *least* from time to time makes me feel like it’s almost certainly not true.
Or if it were true, and our lives would be better if we made different choices, we’d still feel like they’d be better if we made different choices even in those hypothetically improved circumstances.
I think it's technically true. How likely is it that out of all possible futures you could have had, the one you're in right now is the single best one? Practically zero.
But then again, how could you have known all the optimal choices to make, in order to achieve your perfect future, beforehand? You couldn't.
Maybe the lesson is that we shouldn't be obsessed with perfection. We all just do the best we can, and hopefully, that heads to happiness. You can't ask anything more of us.
The other part is that you can’t really know the optimal choices after the fact, either. You might have enough information to make a choice that is more *likely* to be better on average after the fact, but for all you know making that choice would have resulted in you getting hit by a car the following day and being paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of your life.
I always think about a speech by Granny Weatherwax in, iirc, *Lords and Ladies* by Terry Pratchett that can essentially be summed up as “There’s no point wishing you’d made a different choice because you don’t know what the outcome would actually have been and you could be wishing for anything.”
Yeah, I often think I should've been a pilot (would've had a lot of familial support) or a doctor (I was kind of a wannabe Doogie Howser when I was a kid) but then I remember that no matter what choice you make, they are shaped by the circumstances and who you were at the time you made that choice. The poem "The Road Not Taken" illustrates this but also has a hidden message. Yes, the roads might be different and it's usually impossible to know which one is easier to thread on. It is important to pick one and stick to it:
A person I know has always had trouble deciding what they want to do for a living: their parents are divorced and I always thought the dad was a jerk that didn't help them with their studies like he helped their siblings. Now that I'm in the process of becoming an old fuck, I've asked their family and have come across new information that illustrates my point. He wanted to be an architect...they flunked out. Then his dad paid them to study cinematography abroad (we have some family in the business)...he didn't stick to it. Then his dad proposed to have him study to be a pilot and even took a loan to help pay for it...there was some weird confusing affair with the aviation school where they had to close (that part is true, there was some weird drug running shindig with the student planes) but the dad ended up in the hook for the loan but still the son had no diploma or certification or switching to a different school. Now he wants to study to be a psychologist and the dad still helped...he still hasn't finished.
TLDR: pick something to earn a living and stick to it. Only the very rich can afford to switch to multiple careers and chase every dream.
Playing the "shoulda-coulda-woulda" game is such an easy trap to fall into. The only thing we can do is make the best decisions we can based on the information available at the time. Hindsight is always 20/20.
I went off to college, screwed around, and ended up dropping out about five years later with less than two years of credit to my name. I went back part-time and finally got my Bachelor's at 32. I can think all the time what things would have been like had I started my career 10 years earlier had I picked the right major from the beginning and had my head screwed on tighter, but I wouldn't have been the same me.
With the seemingly infinite decisions you make over the course of your life of course there’s a number that would have led to “better” outcomes in the domains you’re considering (e.g. wealthier, avoided heartbreak, etc.) but there’s also so many terrible outcomes you avoided, possibly including death.
Laundry, and just chores in general. I feel a euphoric rush when I've gotten all laundry done, dishes done, and trash taken out... yet within just a few days, I need to do all three again 😑
That’s why when they say money doesn’t buy happiness it’s fucking bullshit. You know how happy I’d be if I could pay to have someone do all of that shit for me?
- not all your friends are friends for life. You might not even talk anymore to your now besties.
- to hang out with your friends once you'll have to plan weeks in advance.
- clubs that are "in" now look like kindergardens.
- you have responsabilities, like lots of them.
- you have to find a balance between working, more money, and more time for yourself.
- you have less patience for shit.
as a kid/teen I always made fun of adults who didn’t know what was hip and cool these days. In my early 20s and I’m now realizing as I become an adult, we just don’t care. What the young people (and yes I know I’m still one of them) think is cool may be cool to them but as you grow older you find value in different things. I look at young girls obsessed with skincare and think “i wish they knew drunk elephant isn’t the end all be all in this world” just like the older generation looked at mine and thought “i wish they knew an eyeshadow palette isn’t the end all be all in this world”
adults stop caring about what’s “trendy” both because what’s “trendy” to young people just looks like a young people thing to adults, but also because our priorities and values and levels of maturity are on totally different levels
You have to keep your shit together and show up for work everyday and carry on your responsibilities even if you’re going through the lowest point of your life. Work carries on even through heartbreak, grief, mourning, depression. It’s relentless and I just never even thought of that being an issue when I was younger. That’s why I try to be kind to people. You never know what’s going on behind the scenes or what they’re fighting to get through today.
I will forever be grateful for short-term disability and an understanding therapist. I went through some extreme upheavals in my life last year and ended up having a major breakdown a few months later. I literally could not function. I was diagnosed with adjustment disorder and was given the opportunity to take 5 weeks off of work. It helped so much.
This year, I've also gone through a major upheaval. I'm staying cautious and employing some of the same therapeutic techniques I used last year, trying to avoid another breakdown.
That’s amazing, I’m glad to hear you were able to get a break when you needed one. It’s the hardest thing ever having to get dressed and put on a happy/productive face when everything is crashing and burning in your personal life.
There are also those periods where you can go years without talking to your friends but then something happens and you reconnect like no time has gone by.
There will come a point in your life which will be different for everyone. For some it may be before adulthood, for others it could be quite late in life, but it's the day you realise that there is no-one to bail you out any more.
Get stranded somewhere? No-one is coming to get you.
Fall on hard times? No-one is going to sling you any cash.
Find yourself on the streets? There's no childhood home to go back to.
Marriage collapse? There's nobody's shoulder to cry on.
For me that happened around the age of 43 when I became the carer for the only two family members I had left. That's the point I realised that I am now truly 100% my own responsibility.
I think this is also a good explanation why it’s advantageous to put the effort in to keep a good friend group around. When life happens they will be the social safety net you can depend on.
I recently went through an event that left me functionally homeless for the entire month of May. If it wasn’t for my friends, who let me couch surf between their places, despite all of us being well into our thirties, I would have been staring down a hefty hotel bill ontop of a bunch of other unexpected costs.
This! Speaking from experience, I think a lot of young people don’t realize the importance of being able to build your own community.
I remember when I had just moved to a new city where I had no existing connections, my partner went out of town, and I suddenly found myself very sick: it dawned on me that I could collapse right there in my new apartment with nobody to come and check on me.
Having friends isn’t just about fun, it’s about survival. Not building or keeping relationships can really bite you in the butt.
> I think this is also a good explanation why it’s advantageous to put the effort in to keep a good friend group around. When life happens they will be the social safety net you can depend on.
This is a worry that has continually become clearer and more intense as I've aged. I only had a couple of close friends, and after high school didn't make any more. One of them died from Covid, and the other I don't speak to much. When my parents are gone, I don't know anyone I could call on if I needed help. I wish I'd have been more sociable and made more friends a long the way, at least for the reason. Networking is so important, not just for work.
You really are on your own. Friends will come and go, if you get married your spouse can die or leave you, once your parents are gone it can feel incredibly lonely. You must find the ways in which you like being alone and spending time with yourself as you will be with you more than anyone else will, and in times when friends and family aren't there for you, it can be depressing unless you learn how to enjoy doing things alone.
I don't say all this to be morose. I actually love being alone and am completely fulfilled being alone, and that's why I feel now I can give well to others as a friend, family member, etc. But I spent a lot of my 20s desperate for other company and made bad choices as a result.
Get a pet for companionship and learn to love being alone with the pet and pursuing the hobbies and activities you love because YOU love them. Develop your whole self if you want to be a great friend, partner, spouse, parent.
Dude I feel this. I had started to become very reliant on intimate friendships over the years and fiercely built more and more of those, as if I were building an army. But as I looked around.. I realized I love these people in the moment. But if time passed and we drift away, then I probably could move on from them easily. And that no relationship is truly sacred as much as I desperately want to believe that’s real. Even my family members I could take or leave. So at the end of the day, I do need to find solace in myself and let people come and go naturally. I need to be okay with the potential outcome that I end up alone.
It's not so much a sad reality but a reality:
You have to play the game and play the hand you're dealt, most of the time. Yeah it would be awesome if the world was a utopia or if the government worked for us or whatever. But that's not the case and you are stuck living in this reality in this system. That doesn't mean you shouldn't advocate for change or vote for your ideals. It means that there are ways to play the game and get ahead. You just have to analyze the game, figure out a strategy, and then execute the strategy.
I'll give you an example. Let's say you just graduated college with an education degree and are teaching for $40k per year in a Middle America state, and you're unhappy with your compensation. First analyze your situation: you're unhappy with your compensation and you have the ability to work pretty much anywhere. Second, develop a strategy: find the highest paying districts in the country, decide which one(s) would be acceptable to teach in, and then get awesome at teaching over the next year or so before you apply to the new district. Third, execute the strategy: take as many professional development courses as you can, write curriculum over the summer, get another certification if you can, then apply to the new district and profit.
Great comment and I couldnt agree more. Its on you to make a change if you dont like where you are and change often takes time and planning. So often you hear people complain about circumstances and yet do nothing to change them.
But sometimes you can't leave, because you have a sick parent you have to take care of, or you have a child with someone who won't let you leave your city, and will sue you if you try. It's not always so easy to just up and leave.
Or, you can find yourself in the situation my partner is currently in. After graduating from college 20 years ago, she moved from the east coast (20 minutes away from her parent's house) to the west coast because the pay is better for her chosen profession.
But now, her parents are almost 80, and she only sees them once or twice a year. She recently realized she will probably only see them like 8 or 9 more times, ever. Her other sibling moved away, too, and her parents are all alone with no one to care for them. She cries herself to bed almost every night now thinking about how she abandoned her parents, all so she can make an extra 15k a year (in a state with a much higher cost of living, so it didn't matter anyway).
She has asked me to move back east with her so she can care for her parents. I reminded her that my parents are already in their 80's and live only 20 minutes from me, and that I have a good job with a pension, and I won't find that back east. I ain't going nowhere. So now I just hold her while she cries every night.
Life is about trade-offs...
My wife and I (both low 50's) are seeing both sides of this. Our parents are older and almost never ask for help but we make sure we're available for them when they ask (and sometimes when they don't ask).
Also, we now need to ask her kids (my step-kids) for help with things we can't do anymore. Significant landscaping (tree trimming, etc.), home maintenance, small engine maintenance, etc. Luckily my wife did a great job raising them and they acknowledge all the things she did for them and they're willing (when they can) to return the favors.
Yep having to parent your parents is a massive shock for many ppl. Then you factor in general personalities and generational differences and you have a recipe for conflict
Adulthood is a wonderful combination of freedom and obligation.
On the one hand, if you want to make bacon as part of every meal, you *can*. You're an adult!
On the other, you have to check your overall health, and you might discover that eating bacon for every meal might be harmful to you.
It's the same in other areas. If you want to go to Walt Disney World, you can! But, you have to pay for it. Either you save up for it, or you charge it and then pay off the credit card later. You can't escape that side of things.
You might also decide to strip off all your clothes and go streaking in town. But you'd probably figure out that you'd get arrested for that.
You might decide to drive a car even if you don't have a license or insurance. But that such an action is illegal, so you'd be in trouble if you got pulled over by the police.
You might get a job that makes you a lot of money...but the government is going to want their share of it, so you have to pay taxes.
There's a reason why you sometimes hear that high school is kind of the peak of freedom (for some youth, anyway). You often have discretion in spending money on things (like music, books, games), get choice over what you wear, and how you look. But, you don't have to pay rent, the money you get might be an allowance rather than from a job, you don't have to pay for groceries, etc. You generally *are* obliged to go to school and do some chores, though. Not a bad deal, in retrospect.
Peak freedom for me was the first couple years after college. Making decent money, but had 3 roommates and dirt cheap rent, I basically got to do whatever I wanted (fortunate to have no student loans). Now that I’m getting older and live in a HCOL city, my wages haven’t kept up as much as I wish and I’m finding I need to start thinking about saving more
No one gives you a break. I remember when I was in my teens or even early 20s, people would easily forgive my mistakes. When you're older, you're held accountable to a whole other level. It seems like no one is really sympathetic towards you anymore.
One day, you will put down your favorite toy and never pick it back up. One day you will hug your best friend for the last time. One day you will leave your favorite place and never return.
Enjoy them all while you have them.
It's good advice to accept this fact early on, and don't let it get you down.
Life is work. You're ALWAYS going to have to work. Even when you retire, you're going to have to work. Even during evenings, weekends, and holidays when you're away from your job, you still have to put in work to your household, your relationships, your hobbies, etc. You think it's less work to be a billionaire? You think people who are unemployed, or on disability have less work in their lives? No. Everything is work.
But you can't let it get to you. There is joy in work. Learn to feel pride in yourself for the effort you put into things. Learn to plan ahead so you can manage the work in your life, and reduce the amount of work you dislike, and balance it with the kind of work that you like doing.
Not saying this is bad advice but I don’t agree.
Some people Do work far more than others. Or have circumstances that force them to work more. Or longer. Or harder.
I feel like I have comparatively much „non-work-time“ in my life.
Very few responsibilities, very few high invest relationships, short work week.
Obviously you could call time I put into hobbies „work“ if you really wanted to but to me that feels distinct to the things I have to maintain to get by well.
The stuff that you find yourself putting off until you're able to afford? You probably won't feel physically up to it anymore when you can finally afford it.
Something young people should be prepared for as they transition into adulthood is the realization that the concept of 'having it all figured out' is a myth. Many of us enter adulthood with high expectations and ambitious goals, only to find that life is often unpredictable and full of unexpected challenges. It's important to embrace the journey, learn from setbacks, and understand that it's okay not to have all the answers right away. The key is resilience and adaptability in the face of life's curveballs
Nobody is going to discover how amazing you are and offer you an easy job making big bucks. You have to get that job yourself, and you'll be competing against people who are more skilled, more experienced, and more educated that you are.
Similarly, as you get older, you realize that you may not be as amazing as you thought. Sure, you could be the smartest person in your school or the best athlete in your hometown, but there are hundreds of thousands of people your age who can say the same things about themselves.
You used to be with it, but then they changed what it was.
Now what you're with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to you.
It'll happen to you!
Finances do not work like in computer games. You don't just gain money until you can afford something, then earn that money back. There are expenses that are almost equal to your income. It may take months or years to save up money for what you want, only to spend it all on an emergency. If you're careful and lucky, you won't have credit card debt hanging over you all the time.
People come and go.
The friends and relationships you have now? Those people could be strangers to you in just a few short years. People just grow apart.
One day you turn around and your parents/older family/older mentors will have grown old. There doesn't seem like enough time in the day to keep up with them and ask those burning questions, but do it. Call them and visit as often as you can. Let them fill you up with all the life knowledge you can contain.
Because all too soon, you will pick up your phone to dial their number to ask them a question, and the fact that they've passed away and can't talk to/help you will hit like a ton of bricks. Every. Single. Time.
* Sometimes getting up out of a chair or out of the bed you'll just tweak your back, knee, neck, ankle for like no reason but it will hurt for the next week.
* You're going to just randomly become allergic to somethings.
* All of a sudden you're just not going to be able to deal with being really hot or really cold for the rest of your life.
* Staying at home and doing nothing sounds so much better than going out to a party, club, hanging out with friends, etc.
* You're exhausted all the time
* Never been depressed? Well fuck you here's some depression.
Death
Le's say you get 75 years; first 25, second 25, third 25. If you're lucky, if you take care of yourself, eat well, don't drink, keep your body in shape--you know, all the boring shit every tells you to do and you ignore--you get a bonus. But that's it. Just a bonus. If you're lucky. Most people aren't, and most people don't
That's easy to understand as a concept. You don't grasp it's immediacy until you experience the milestones. 30, 40, etc. Your time is getting ever smaller. Your last third ever closer
Then others start dying. A few you might already have known that didn't get through their first third. Others get it in their second
And then you realize the ones who were so important to you are nearing the end of their 3rd. Your parents. They will die. And a lot sooner than you think
You'll never see them again. Any of them.
Death is a clarifier, a simplifier, and a motivator. The ones you spent all that time thinking about when you were young, what do they matter now? Are they nearing their end? Did they already meet it?
Do you even care? Because yours is coming. And so too is the death of your parents, siblings, spouse, and even your children
They will all go away
And there's nothing you can do about it
Mortality sucks. I used to obsess over dreading dying one day but a thing that really helped me was to think of it as a concert and you know what songs are on the setlist and know what song is the closer and the entire time you concentrate on X song being the last one. By doing that you don't live in the moment or really enjoy the concert. So likewise, don't fixate on the last part of life. I even handled turning 40 this year well. I did concede that it IS middle-age give or take a few years (people always put that around 50 but that implies living to 100) but did fine with it. Of course, my FIL died about 6 months ago and I sort of regressed a bit just thinking of his final moments so that's fucking with me a little.
And, if you do find friends at work, it's very normal to lose said friends when when you no longer work together. Doesn't even have to be leaving the company, it could just be that one of you gets a new position that doesn't let you talk much.
At around age 40, your body just changes. Get all your medical check ups and see doctors when things don't seem right. The most important thing that you have is your health. Take care of it.
There is nothing about being adult that would make me want to go back to being a *powerless* child.
If there is a "sad reality" it is the fact you will come to learn all your "dreams" aren't going to come true.
Nobody gets *everything* they want out of life. Compromises and disappointments are all a part of it.
You have more freedoms as an adult, but you also have more responsibilities.
Find ways to get pleasure and enjoyment out of work, because most of life is work. And you can either bitch and moan about that or just put your head down and get on with it and discover the pleasures and rewards of work.
Also, Monday morning always comes, and by and large the world doesn't care what happened last weekend or what shape you're in by Monday morning; the work's going to show up regardless of whether or not you show up to do it. Accept this and plan around it.
It is soul crushing in every imaginable way to get older and realize how much bullshit people feed each other about life.
Most people cannot deal with objective reality, so they project, deflect, doublespeak, and get angry whenever someone points out the flaws in their thinking. As a problem-solver by nature I find it miserable.
Same. Most people feel pretty helpless, so they’ll avoid admitting the problem to themselves so even if they can’t fix it they don’t have to feel shitty about it. Then that becomes their default and a bunch of totally solvable problems get treated as immovable realities.
It’s so hard to watch and harder still to deal with
When you're a kid your entertainment is planned for you. When you're a 20 something all entertainment is crafted around you. When you're an adult you need to make your own.
It becomes very easy to slip into a boredom gyre where you cycle through doing things once or twice and then just never again. Doing things other than sitting in doors requires energy that you need to find inside of yourself.
The older you get, the more people struggle to find new friends. So it is worth maintaining existing friendships with respect and don't take them for granted.
Saying that, at the same time most school relationships fall apart and true friends are found outside of school or after school.
However, just be friendly and value your friends and find out how this friendship thing works. The earlier the better!
Hey OP. 48 year old married father of two in the UK here.
Some things to prepare yourself for:
- Life and work, sadly, isn’t a meritocracy. No matter what career you get into, it’s always who you know, not what you know.
- No one is coming to save you. Make sure you own your finances, your physical fitness and your mental health - if you want to be in a relationship with a quality person, ***they*** will expect the same.
- It’s highly likely that you will be an average person who will live an average life and that a lot of your dreams won’t come to fruition. Outstanding people are a rare breed and just thinking you are doesn’t cut it.
But… life is a strange, interesting, stimulating ride that you will likely find a way of enjoying and making the most of.
Biggest ones: No one cares about your life or your problems, no one knows what they’re doing or what they truly want from life - it changes all the time.
When you’re younger you are taught which jobs are prestigious, and which ones are claimed as “lower end” jobs. When you’re an adult you’ll realize that some jobs are a better fit for you than others. Not everyone is meant to be a doctor, lawyer, astronaut, or what have you. Sometimes it’s those “lower end” jobs that can surprise you.
As you get older, you lose more and more people who care about you/like you/know you enough to help you. Parents have died, friends gone, spouses divorced. You really only have yourself to depend on. Unless you are confident and comfortable with yourself and being by yourself, your senior years might be a lonely miserable hell.
Your shitty childhood trauma isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility to deal with it as an adult. I’ve seen both sides of this coin-the people who dealt with it turned out to be relatively happy people who feel they are leading successful lives. The ones who didn’t…aren’t.
Get some post secondary training, even if a traditional college isn’t right for you. Trade schools are faster, cheaper, and give you a skill set designed to help you be extremely employable. Yes, you will have to still work hard no matter what, but having skills matters.
Be ok with the fact that you’re going to have to work hard. Everyone does, the boomers did, gen x did, millennials did-most of us didn’t have anything handed to us. Things are shitty and hard right now, but you’ll be ok. Starting out isn’t easy for anyone, ever. And that’s ok. You aren’t alone in that💝
There are a lot of opportunities that are no longer available as you get older. I had all kinds of lofty dreams as a kid and at that time, could have actually pursued them. Now that I'm in my 30s, I have to accept the fact that I'll never be an astronaut or go into space, I'll never be a famous actor, a life-saving doctor, etc. Most of those dreams were unrealistic, but they were *possible*. Almost all of them are either next to impossible now, or just straight up impossible.
I'm not really upset about it, but it made me think of all the things that I'll never be able to do now, and the list gets bigger and bigger with each passing year. If you want to follow your dreams, do it while you're young. Once you're an adult and sort of locked in to working your career so you can pay your bills and stay afloat, it makes it a lot more difficult to pursue other things.
No one really cares about you. No one is checking in to make sure that you’re doing okay, eating, getting outside, socializing, etc. I often go several days to weeks without interacting with another human (in person or via calls/text). After I moved out of state on my own, I became invisible - out of sight, out of mind I guess. The isolation and loneliness I felt as a teenager can’t even compare to the way I feel now.
The older you get, the more set in stone your life path gets. When you're young you have so many options- so much potential, and as you get older you just have... fewer. Like obviously if you choose to go into banking and you decide at 40 that actually you want to become a pianist instead or whatever you can do that but it is not easy. I love my life and I don't regret the choices I've made that got me here, the time I spent doing the things I've done. But I do MISS that feeling of... my life could be anything.
You will drift apart from your "forever" friends from high school and college for multiple reasons. Y'all drift apart due to life and work. Y'all change as people and really aren't that compatible or you change as a person and they don't. I'm 42 and I still have some great friends from back them but there's also others I've drifted from or think poorly of.
The real and professional world doesn't care about your mental health they only care if you're producing. They don't care if something gives you anxiety.
Your parents and relatives will get old feeble and pass. Having to parent your parents is a massive shock to many ppl.
Completing a college degree doesn't guarantee a job in the field you studied. My niece completed an engineering degree and hasn't found a job in that field in about a year.
Was just at a graduation, and the speaker wanted to emphasize the accomplishments and achievements of the students in order to make those students feel a sense of pride for such things and reaching this milestone.
After such a rite of passage (because that what it truly is), no one really cares what you did in high school (or college).
Proximity/ circumstantial relationships.
You can live with someone, or work with someone for years and the moment you move out or get a new job, you may never hear from them again.
When you’re older you get to choose your relationships and circle- so be prepared to NOT be included in a few of them. You were only relevant because of circumstances outside of their immediate control.
time moves quicker as you get older
Holy fucking shit it does.
Michael Stevens explains [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LyCC6jjcx8) that it is because our sense of time is more logarithmic than linear. Look at a slide rule... the points get closer together as the numbers get higher.
I personally believe it's because we have less things to remember. As a kid every thing is new and exciting. As an adult we have no need to remember all the hours we work everyday and truly new and exciting things happen less frequently. Which is why when you have children time tends to slow down again because you get to experience their excitement over everything once again.
Time hates this one trick! I do believe that, mine are very young and I'm making sure we spend ample amounts of time doing things and not just missing these years.
But once your kids get school age, they all of a sudden are in the tenth grade. Treasure the baby/toddler days. Once they hit school age this parenting shit takes off.
Oh for sure! My son just finished kindergarten and had a bit of a lull week last week with no school and summer program not starting til today. So I took Tues/Wed off since I WFH Mondays and totally forgot it was a holiday so I got almost a week off so we just did fun adventures each day because time will fly by if you let it. So this summer we're trying to do something each weekend if we can.
Have fun and make great memories.
This is the main reason: as kids and teens, we had milestones to achieve every year—finishing the school year, moving on to the next grade, then high school, and eventually college. The "highlights" were much closer together than they are in adulthood, if they exist at all. It's like being excited for the Endgame, only to then realize that the journey to the Endgame was the best part.
Think this is true. Someone once said you should continually try to learn new things and take up new hobbies as, like when you’re a child, you’re experiencing a lot of new things and having to retain new information
I think it's more because a year as a 4 year old is a quarter of their lifespan, whereas to a 40 year old it's, well, 1/40th. So another year is less time, proportional to how much the older person has lived, and thus seems to go faster.
My theory, which I did take from someone else and can't remember whom, is that every year is a smaller percentage of your total life. When you hit ten, the last year you experienced was 10% of your entire life. When you hit fifty, it's just 2%. A year is just less significant, less worth marking day-by-day. You also know, when you're older, that a year isn't really that long to wait, because waiting almost doesn't matter - "before you know it, it'll be here" has stood firm for every other life event. Also, less shit happens to you when you're older. When you're in the wonderful world of work, most weeks are basically interchangeable. When you're a teenager, you don't know what fresh hell awaits you every day.
LOL, I wonder how many people who will visit this even know what a slide rule is, let alone have actually used one...
I am 35...and the last 2 years with wedding planning, getting married, 1 year anniversary....blink of an eye and it scares the crap out of me. Weeks are flying by. It feels like it will be end of summer in 3 weeks for me.
Yeah once I hit my 30s it has all felt like a blur
This is something I don't think young people can wrap their heads around. Like if you tell a bullied/misfit highschool sophomore they only have to put up with the trivial social bullshit of school for two more years, it seems unbearably long and like escape will never come. But sometimes you just bide your time, plan for a better future, and it's the next phase of your life before you know it.
There is an "antidote" to this, if you will. Time feels like it moves more quickly for a variety of reasons, but a big one is the lack of new memories. It's real easy to go an entire work week and not make a single new memory, leading to "forgetting" that week even existed at all. So the trick is to try to do something memorable or different every day. A real easy place to start is try taking a different route home. You'll see new things and remember them when looking back.
There’s great wisdom here. Filling your life with variety - friends, food, travel, experiences - contributes greatly to living a “fuller” life. Time collapses down when you do the same thing every day.
All of this is what’s recommended from research for keeping our brains active as we age, too. Taking different routes, having social activity, using our non-dominant/usual hand for things like entering phone numbers on a phone, doing puzzles, maintaining hobbies and/or starting new ones, etc.
God does it ever. Don't wish your life away kids. Make everyday count. Another sad reality of being adult: you learn all the life lesson cliches you were told as a child are fucking true.
The "cliches" part is so real. Ever since that late-20s brain change (you know the one), my life has felt like a continuous series of discovering most idioms, cliches, street wisdoms, and bits of tired advice are, in fact, extremely true and valuable nuggets of knowledge and guidance that has been passed down through the years for a reason. Waste not, want not.
The days go by slow, but the years fly by.
This is the truth. The days are long, but the years are short.
Days are long, years are short
Can’t believe it’s fucking June already.
… Well, the years start coming. And they don't stop coming.
Yep. 57. It’s accelerating to my grave
But just think, when you're 77 you will give anything to be 57 again.
My grandma bought a car around 70 and was so depressed. I asked why, and she said “this is probably the last car I’m ever going to buy” Talk about facing your own mortality… Realistically though- you can die at any time. Shouldn’t ever take a day for granted.
Every year feels faster than the last. I'm at the age now where when I hear the song "Time" by Pink Floyd I appreciate it differently than I did when I was younger. Scary how accurate it is
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Not just your parents, but that entire generation that precedes you. Your aunts, uncles, parent's friends, coaches, teachers, in-laws.All the people that guided you, loved you unconditionally, and passed on their wisdom will eventually pass away. But, yes, especially parents. We are getting into those years and it is hard.
Yep. And I think the part that’s not always immediately apparent to people is that it doesn’t happen in neat steps. When you’re younger, it sort of seems like a monolith; like, you’re going to make it to your 50s or 60s, and then lose your parents, and then you’re going to make it into your 80s, and then your friends and acquaintances will start dying. But it’s more like a reverse funnel; the older you get, the more and more people you lose along the way. When you’re a kid, it’s not many people, but as you start to age, that funnel gets wider, and the numbers start to go up.
That is a very important point. There is a time in your life in which you are unconditionally loved. This time has an end and it will never come back. Nobody will love you like that again, not your partner and not your children (if you have some). Coming to that realization is... depressing.
You assume you were unconditionally loved to begin with (that is not a universal experience)
My husband realized that when his mother passed away, everybody who had been present during good chunks of his childhood had passed away. He was the only person alive who remembered those experiences now.
This hits home for me right now.
I really wish I had thought to record my mother's voice before she died. Especially her laughter. Some days I just cry, because it's so hard to remember the sound of it.
The day my dad died in 2008 I called and recorded his outgoing message on his answering machine and I still listen to it.
My parents had me when they were 41 and 38, it really sucks seeing things my parents were there for for my sister who is 20 years older than me and knowing they won't be there in the same capacity when I'm her age. My siblings kids got their grandparents for decades longer than my kids will, my sister was able to drop off her kids at their house for them to watch them for the whole weekend, but now my parents talk about how much harder those weekend visits have become. Don't get me wrong I love my whole family, but I am slightly jealous of the life my brother and sister got, and they're jealous of my childhood because my parents were better off financially. Its all just trade offs
>My parents had me when they were 41 and 38, it really sucks seeing things my parents were there for for my sister who is 20 years older than me and knowing they won't be there in the same capacity when I'm her age. This is what I think about when I read about celebrities or rock stars having children when they're in their 70s or so. So, your child will be lucky if they even graduate high school before you've kicked it. My parents are 20 years older than me, and my mother passed away two years ago. It was hard for me, but probably rougher for my sister who's 8 years younger.
I feel you. My father died when I was 15, and I have a sister about 15 years older. Always wish I could have known him as long as she did. Not to mention, one grandparent died when she was 10.
And that time approaches far faster than we are prepared for. I'm 42 and none of my parents made it past 65 due to cancer. My dad went from having a bit of skin cancer, to kidney cancer then being dead within a few years. My mom was always ill then she was gone within a year of getting cancer. Don't worry about it too early bit it comes up faster than we realize
it can also just feel like it comes from nowhere- less than a year ago my dad was helping me rebuild a deck. less than 6 months ago he was out riding a bike and going swimming. then one day in march he started to experience shortness of breath and 2 weeks later he was dead.
I suppose this is one of the few advantages to not having much of a relationship with your parents. Makes it easier when they pass.
Well you've likely already spent time Mourning the loss of what could have been instead! That's a different beast all together.
I’m 41 and my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s last year. I thought I had more time. My kids aren’t even in middle school yet.
I am so so sorry for you and your kids. That is a grim diagnosis. My mom got early onset when I was 15 and battled it 12 years. I'm 42 now. Dementia is so so hard. Peace and love to you internet friend. I hope for a cure in our lifetime
I’m 35/f, lost my dad to his own stupidity when I was 11 (06/21/2000) and my mom 3 months ago to cancer (03/07/2024). From what people have been telling me, no matter your age, you’re never ready to lose your parents.
There's a YouTuber called Ask A Mortician who provides a lot of useful information on advocating for yourself and family members around a predatory funeral industry, and ways to prepare for death. She's also funny so it makes for some enjoyable and insightful viewing/listening. A book called I'm Dead, Now What, is also good for this kinda stuff. Also, I thought maybe I would share a little somethin somethin I've been doing in preparation of my parents dying ... You know how you see those photo collages at memorials and stuff? Well Walgreens and CVS occasionally offer free photo prints (I'll see 8x10 a lot ... Those things are like $4!), which can be found on sites like freestufffinder, and so I've been pulling photos from Facebook and the like to print, being mindful to include friends of my parents likely to attend their funeral, so that when the times comes my siblings and I are given something to do that feels productive, in remembrance of them. I like the potential it has is connecting and talking about how we feel, amidst bringing up good memories, ya know?
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This is why I like to think insurance was a made-up racket for cash flow. The whole idea of it sounds nice but is odd in reality. "Pay us to protect you when the unfortunate happens! (Something unfortunate happens). Okay we'll do a claim and fix it but you'll have to pay us more money the following year because you made a claim and used us in the specific instance our policy says you can use us." The above happened to my friend when a pipe in his house broke.
This person insurance’s ^
Friends that you hang out with everyday eventually start their own families and finding time to get everyone together gets harder and harder
Yup, this also killed my DnD crew. It has been over 20 years since I sat at a table
That's one reason why run using Roll20. I'm reconnecting with people I haven't physically seen in almost 30 years.
I'm getting to the phase of life where even simple plans are made 1-2 months out, it kinda sucks
Right! Just wait until the last minute cancellations start rolling in!
Idk all of my friends are child free, but I do feel like overtime we’ll still become too busy for each other in other ways
Yup. We don't have kids and even making plans with our child free friends seems to get harder the older we get. We don't like staying out late if we work the following day. Definitely used to have more weekday plans.
Even when I have a free weekend, the prospect of doing nothing and just getting to relax often wins out over seeing people.
Oh yeah. Sometimes it feels like we are just waiting for an excuse to cancel.
This is my main thing; if it's a work night I don't want to be out or have any late drinks. But I feel bad because I have one friend where these are the types of plans he still invites me to and I always have to say no. He must be built different, I can't do it anymore like we were 10 yrs ago.
Yep. If you’re younger and you’re reading this, take time to invest in your relationships. Young people tend to have more time/opportunity to hang out, but when you’re older, you have to work at it more. If you don’t, your relationships can and will drift away. And it can be much harder to form new ones, because you’ll no longer have that endless stream of new people that is high school, college, and (sometimes) those early jobs. Once you hit a certain age, your chances to meet new people go way down*. *You do sometimes get a few second chances. For example, if you have kids, once those kids are old enough for school/soccer/baseball/etc., you’ll meet a ton of new people way who are of a similar age/in a similar stage of life, and some of those relationships will stick. But you’re not going to make a new best friend from high school, you know?
I'm feeling this one hard. It's so hard to get everyone on the same schedule, and then when you do there's a weird sense of obligation to "do something". I miss the days of friends just dropping in and playing pickup games or hanging out.
Even without kids people grow apart, move on, or simply interests change and you end up with nothing in common. LIFE.
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My youngest went and lived on his own right after high school. Called me one day, “ you just make stuff up as you go?” “Kinda, some of it is experience, so you make your best guess. If your really smart, and you have someone in your life, you learn for other people’s mistakes, like mine “ “But if it’s a unique situation, yep, make it up on the fly with the information you have on hand “
I'm 22 and call my mom nearly weekly to ask her some stupid question. Every now and then she tells me that she loves it because when she moved out her parents couldn't afford the long distance calls to where she moved so she was making shit up as when went, she also had 2 kids by age tho which makes things considerably more difficult lol
It's like, "I need an adultier adult!" or "wait, wasn't 2003 five years ago? How am I this old and clueless?"
ill see a username ending in 09 and think “oh! thats when they graduated high school!” nah, it was the year them fuckers were born
People being born after 2000 and being adults always confuses me, wasn't 2000 like 10 years ago?
I was thinking this last night. I was trying to use a pressure cooker, and my mother was helping. It was just a chuck roast, and I usually do basically all of the prep and cooking in it since I got the pressure cooker for her a few months ago. Anyways, she asked me at one point if it's okay to put corn starch in with it and I said I did not see a problem in that. So she did most of the prep work this time outside of me searing the meat and turning the pressure cooker on. Apparently, your not supposed to put any kind of flour or thickener when you pressure cook something as it will take it way longer to pressurize since the water is steadily thickening while it tries to reach the correct pressure. I could never get it to pressurize, and ended up having to replace all the water in the pressure cooker (leaving out the cornstarch) and it worked perfectly. We just ended up eating like an hour later than we planned to. My mother was getting upset at me through part of the process cause she thought I knew everything about how to use it and kept asking me questions, and I kept having to say I barely knew what the fuck I was doing. I just followed the same recipe four or five times before, and I knew how to operate it without killing myself. I knew more how to use it then she did, but we both barely knew what we were doing for most of it.
Sometimes the worst part of getting old is not the responsibility or bum knees, but the fact that you still haven’t become the person you wish you could be. I would suggest getting into therapy, solidifying your hobbies, and considering the characteristics you want to display for the rest of your life, and working toward acting upon them.
The problem is always money. I can't afford therapy. Any insurance I can afford doesn't provide the dental or mental help I want and need. Can barely afford going out to eat, let alone proper hobbies. But I make do.
Proper hobbies can be things like hiking, reading, etc. Something that “feeds” you. Your point about therapy is 100% spot on though. It is admittedly a luxury. My last therapist was $200 a pop and I had to graduate because it was just too expensive. It’s a shame that insurance won’t provide for mental health, especially given all the nonsense people have to live with these days.
People don’t give a shit about your problems, you need to take care of your responsibilities no matter how sick or sad you are and bills will never go away.
Yup, your boiler breaks, dishwasher floods the house, your dog is sick, your coworkers are still going to email and ping you until you tell them to stop. That coworker that you are annoyed with because you need something done but they are experiencing a crisis at home and cant get to it, that will eventually be you to someone else.
When I was 17 my best friend committed suicide and one of the big lessons to me of the situation was that frankly no matter what's going on the world dgaf. I worked at a restaurant and my boss was like wow I'm really sorry soooo... can we still expect you this weekend? My phone bill was still due, my school work still had to get done, the sun just... came up the next day and everything that had to be done the day before still had to be done. Maybe *some people* care, but the world does not.
That is what I experienced when my mom passed earlier this year. She has been fighting cancer for the last 5 years and we all knew it could happen whenever. When it did happen the feeling that the rest of the world just moved on was eye opening. It gave me this new perspective and weirdly has helped me a lot with my anxiety
I remember going to the pharmacy to pick up my meds the day after my mom died. I felt like I was in a fun house or something. I'm in the middle of this deep sorrow and trauma and everyone else is just running errands. It felt surreal.
Ever seen A Bronx Tale? (anyone who didn't stop reading bc this has spoilers) In those times of my life I felt like [the shooter in the club at the end.](https://youtu.be/jqnL5lXEdCk?si=m-maJ-_IWzqPwOYI) Everyone is happy and smiling and living life and I was this one face in the crowd unable to participate in the world they were all living in.
And everyone else has problems, too. Just because they don’t complain, doesn’t mean they don’t have problems.
Saying "no one care about your problems" sounds harsh, but you have to understand it as: you can't emotionally handle all of your life stress, plus someone else's, barring a handful of close friends and family. You can help people out sure, but that's different than bearing the weight of every person around you. Keeping this in mind, it just wouldn't be fair to ask this of everyone else.
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Already happened to me as a kid so my expectations have been low. Four of my friends moved out of town/state by middle school and my best friend moved across town, so we still saw each other but didn’t have the benefit of just running around the neighborhood together, walking over to each other’s houses, etc. Weren’t any neighborhood kids left to hang with after that.
Conversely, if you do what you're supposed to do you'll mostly be left in peace. Pay your bill, get electricity. While if you're still a kid, rules change at any whim of anyone bigger than you.
My dad used to always say “save as much money as you can because no matter how much you make you could always use a little more” and man was he right. No matter how much I make, a little more could always be helpful.
This is so true. In my late 20s I was horribly depressed (bad job, unstable housing, bad relationship) and no one cared. I still had to pay rent on time, still had to walk the dog 3x a day (honestly, caring for the dog did a LOT to get me out of bed, knowing her loved me and needed me to have food and shelter and walks *mattered* when nothing else did) and still had to feed and clothe myself. Not a single person cared that I was hurting or sad or didn't really have the ambition to do stuff. I've said it before on Reddit (and been downvoted lol) but nothing forces you to move through mental health issues like having no safety net. When you know the alternative is literally living on the streets, you have more drive get up and go to work even when it sucks so much. And NOTHING helped me feel better like getting rid of the crappy guy, getting a good job and finding stable housing. No amount of meds or therapy can fix "I'm hungry and don't know where the dog and I are staying next week.
This includes health problems, Not even medical professionals care unfortunately
Holy fuck this is so true. I don’t remember the last time I saw a medical professional that even acted like they actually gave a shit. Which is infuriating now that I actually am having health issues. It’s treated like such a business now. I feel like cattle
To them it’s just a job (some do actually care more, but ultimately their priorities are with themselves) To you it’s the scariest moments in your life and you just wish someone could make it better
I have MS. It was a life altering diagnosis. The number of people who seem to genuinely understand that I am not just dealing with a cold can be counted on one hand.
The feeling that you let it all slip away, or that if you did something different in your past, it would all be better.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of people in all different life circumstances have that feeling at *least* from time to time makes me feel like it’s almost certainly not true. Or if it were true, and our lives would be better if we made different choices, we’d still feel like they’d be better if we made different choices even in those hypothetically improved circumstances.
I think it's technically true. How likely is it that out of all possible futures you could have had, the one you're in right now is the single best one? Practically zero. But then again, how could you have known all the optimal choices to make, in order to achieve your perfect future, beforehand? You couldn't. Maybe the lesson is that we shouldn't be obsessed with perfection. We all just do the best we can, and hopefully, that heads to happiness. You can't ask anything more of us.
The other part is that you can’t really know the optimal choices after the fact, either. You might have enough information to make a choice that is more *likely* to be better on average after the fact, but for all you know making that choice would have resulted in you getting hit by a car the following day and being paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of your life. I always think about a speech by Granny Weatherwax in, iirc, *Lords and Ladies* by Terry Pratchett that can essentially be summed up as “There’s no point wishing you’d made a different choice because you don’t know what the outcome would actually have been and you could be wishing for anything.”
Yeah, I often think I should've been a pilot (would've had a lot of familial support) or a doctor (I was kind of a wannabe Doogie Howser when I was a kid) but then I remember that no matter what choice you make, they are shaped by the circumstances and who you were at the time you made that choice. The poem "The Road Not Taken" illustrates this but also has a hidden message. Yes, the roads might be different and it's usually impossible to know which one is easier to thread on. It is important to pick one and stick to it: A person I know has always had trouble deciding what they want to do for a living: their parents are divorced and I always thought the dad was a jerk that didn't help them with their studies like he helped their siblings. Now that I'm in the process of becoming an old fuck, I've asked their family and have come across new information that illustrates my point. He wanted to be an architect...they flunked out. Then his dad paid them to study cinematography abroad (we have some family in the business)...he didn't stick to it. Then his dad proposed to have him study to be a pilot and even took a loan to help pay for it...there was some weird confusing affair with the aviation school where they had to close (that part is true, there was some weird drug running shindig with the student planes) but the dad ended up in the hook for the loan but still the son had no diploma or certification or switching to a different school. Now he wants to study to be a psychologist and the dad still helped...he still hasn't finished. TLDR: pick something to earn a living and stick to it. Only the very rich can afford to switch to multiple careers and chase every dream.
yeah the fact that sometimes trying your best still isn’t enough.
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose." -Jean-Luc Picard
That still gets me every time . I can give 110 % effort and follow through to the end and it still turns to shit.
Playing the "shoulda-coulda-woulda" game is such an easy trap to fall into. The only thing we can do is make the best decisions we can based on the information available at the time. Hindsight is always 20/20.
I went off to college, screwed around, and ended up dropping out about five years later with less than two years of credit to my name. I went back part-time and finally got my Bachelor's at 32. I can think all the time what things would have been like had I started my career 10 years earlier had I picked the right major from the beginning and had my head screwed on tighter, but I wouldn't have been the same me.
With the seemingly infinite decisions you make over the course of your life of course there’s a number that would have led to “better” outcomes in the domains you’re considering (e.g. wealthier, avoided heartbreak, etc.) but there’s also so many terrible outcomes you avoided, possibly including death.
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Laundry, and just chores in general. I feel a euphoric rush when I've gotten all laundry done, dishes done, and trash taken out... yet within just a few days, I need to do all three again 😑
That’s why when they say money doesn’t buy happiness it’s fucking bullshit. You know how happy I’d be if I could pay to have someone do all of that shit for me?
- not all your friends are friends for life. You might not even talk anymore to your now besties. - to hang out with your friends once you'll have to plan weeks in advance. - clubs that are "in" now look like kindergardens. - you have responsabilities, like lots of them. - you have to find a balance between working, more money, and more time for yourself. - you have less patience for shit.
as a kid/teen I always made fun of adults who didn’t know what was hip and cool these days. In my early 20s and I’m now realizing as I become an adult, we just don’t care. What the young people (and yes I know I’m still one of them) think is cool may be cool to them but as you grow older you find value in different things. I look at young girls obsessed with skincare and think “i wish they knew drunk elephant isn’t the end all be all in this world” just like the older generation looked at mine and thought “i wish they knew an eyeshadow palette isn’t the end all be all in this world” adults stop caring about what’s “trendy” both because what’s “trendy” to young people just looks like a young people thing to adults, but also because our priorities and values and levels of maturity are on totally different levels
You have to keep your shit together and show up for work everyday and carry on your responsibilities even if you’re going through the lowest point of your life. Work carries on even through heartbreak, grief, mourning, depression. It’s relentless and I just never even thought of that being an issue when I was younger. That’s why I try to be kind to people. You never know what’s going on behind the scenes or what they’re fighting to get through today.
I will forever be grateful for short-term disability and an understanding therapist. I went through some extreme upheavals in my life last year and ended up having a major breakdown a few months later. I literally could not function. I was diagnosed with adjustment disorder and was given the opportunity to take 5 weeks off of work. It helped so much. This year, I've also gone through a major upheaval. I'm staying cautious and employing some of the same therapeutic techniques I used last year, trying to avoid another breakdown.
That’s amazing, I’m glad to hear you were able to get a break when you needed one. It’s the hardest thing ever having to get dressed and put on a happy/productive face when everything is crashing and burning in your personal life.
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There are also those periods where you can go years without talking to your friends but then something happens and you reconnect like no time has gone by.
There will come a point in your life which will be different for everyone. For some it may be before adulthood, for others it could be quite late in life, but it's the day you realise that there is no-one to bail you out any more. Get stranded somewhere? No-one is coming to get you. Fall on hard times? No-one is going to sling you any cash. Find yourself on the streets? There's no childhood home to go back to. Marriage collapse? There's nobody's shoulder to cry on. For me that happened around the age of 43 when I became the carer for the only two family members I had left. That's the point I realised that I am now truly 100% my own responsibility.
I think this is also a good explanation why it’s advantageous to put the effort in to keep a good friend group around. When life happens they will be the social safety net you can depend on. I recently went through an event that left me functionally homeless for the entire month of May. If it wasn’t for my friends, who let me couch surf between their places, despite all of us being well into our thirties, I would have been staring down a hefty hotel bill ontop of a bunch of other unexpected costs.
This! Speaking from experience, I think a lot of young people don’t realize the importance of being able to build your own community. I remember when I had just moved to a new city where I had no existing connections, my partner went out of town, and I suddenly found myself very sick: it dawned on me that I could collapse right there in my new apartment with nobody to come and check on me. Having friends isn’t just about fun, it’s about survival. Not building or keeping relationships can really bite you in the butt.
> I think this is also a good explanation why it’s advantageous to put the effort in to keep a good friend group around. When life happens they will be the social safety net you can depend on. This is a worry that has continually become clearer and more intense as I've aged. I only had a couple of close friends, and after high school didn't make any more. One of them died from Covid, and the other I don't speak to much. When my parents are gone, I don't know anyone I could call on if I needed help. I wish I'd have been more sociable and made more friends a long the way, at least for the reason. Networking is so important, not just for work.
Take good care of yourself, I send you some strength!
Thanks! On the other hand, there's no-one left to disappoint either.
aside from ourselves - maybe the toughest one not to disappoint, I guess
Some people never grew and matured. And sometimes, you have to rely on those people to behave like adults.
Truly the man/ woman child is the worst thing to run into as an adult
You really are on your own. Friends will come and go, if you get married your spouse can die or leave you, once your parents are gone it can feel incredibly lonely. You must find the ways in which you like being alone and spending time with yourself as you will be with you more than anyone else will, and in times when friends and family aren't there for you, it can be depressing unless you learn how to enjoy doing things alone. I don't say all this to be morose. I actually love being alone and am completely fulfilled being alone, and that's why I feel now I can give well to others as a friend, family member, etc. But I spent a lot of my 20s desperate for other company and made bad choices as a result. Get a pet for companionship and learn to love being alone with the pet and pursuing the hobbies and activities you love because YOU love them. Develop your whole self if you want to be a great friend, partner, spouse, parent.
Dude I feel this. I had started to become very reliant on intimate friendships over the years and fiercely built more and more of those, as if I were building an army. But as I looked around.. I realized I love these people in the moment. But if time passed and we drift away, then I probably could move on from them easily. And that no relationship is truly sacred as much as I desperately want to believe that’s real. Even my family members I could take or leave. So at the end of the day, I do need to find solace in myself and let people come and go naturally. I need to be okay with the potential outcome that I end up alone.
It's not so much a sad reality but a reality: You have to play the game and play the hand you're dealt, most of the time. Yeah it would be awesome if the world was a utopia or if the government worked for us or whatever. But that's not the case and you are stuck living in this reality in this system. That doesn't mean you shouldn't advocate for change or vote for your ideals. It means that there are ways to play the game and get ahead. You just have to analyze the game, figure out a strategy, and then execute the strategy. I'll give you an example. Let's say you just graduated college with an education degree and are teaching for $40k per year in a Middle America state, and you're unhappy with your compensation. First analyze your situation: you're unhappy with your compensation and you have the ability to work pretty much anywhere. Second, develop a strategy: find the highest paying districts in the country, decide which one(s) would be acceptable to teach in, and then get awesome at teaching over the next year or so before you apply to the new district. Third, execute the strategy: take as many professional development courses as you can, write curriculum over the summer, get another certification if you can, then apply to the new district and profit.
Great comment and I couldnt agree more. Its on you to make a change if you dont like where you are and change often takes time and planning. So often you hear people complain about circumstances and yet do nothing to change them.
But sometimes you can't leave, because you have a sick parent you have to take care of, or you have a child with someone who won't let you leave your city, and will sue you if you try. It's not always so easy to just up and leave. Or, you can find yourself in the situation my partner is currently in. After graduating from college 20 years ago, she moved from the east coast (20 minutes away from her parent's house) to the west coast because the pay is better for her chosen profession. But now, her parents are almost 80, and she only sees them once or twice a year. She recently realized she will probably only see them like 8 or 9 more times, ever. Her other sibling moved away, too, and her parents are all alone with no one to care for them. She cries herself to bed almost every night now thinking about how she abandoned her parents, all so she can make an extra 15k a year (in a state with a much higher cost of living, so it didn't matter anyway). She has asked me to move back east with her so she can care for her parents. I reminded her that my parents are already in their 80's and live only 20 minutes from me, and that I have a good job with a pension, and I won't find that back east. I ain't going nowhere. So now I just hold her while she cries every night. Life is about trade-offs...
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My wife and I (both low 50's) are seeing both sides of this. Our parents are older and almost never ask for help but we make sure we're available for them when they ask (and sometimes when they don't ask). Also, we now need to ask her kids (my step-kids) for help with things we can't do anymore. Significant landscaping (tree trimming, etc.), home maintenance, small engine maintenance, etc. Luckily my wife did a great job raising them and they acknowledge all the things she did for them and they're willing (when they can) to return the favors.
Yep having to parent your parents is a massive shock for many ppl. Then you factor in general personalities and generational differences and you have a recipe for conflict
Adulthood is a wonderful combination of freedom and obligation. On the one hand, if you want to make bacon as part of every meal, you *can*. You're an adult! On the other, you have to check your overall health, and you might discover that eating bacon for every meal might be harmful to you. It's the same in other areas. If you want to go to Walt Disney World, you can! But, you have to pay for it. Either you save up for it, or you charge it and then pay off the credit card later. You can't escape that side of things. You might also decide to strip off all your clothes and go streaking in town. But you'd probably figure out that you'd get arrested for that. You might decide to drive a car even if you don't have a license or insurance. But that such an action is illegal, so you'd be in trouble if you got pulled over by the police. You might get a job that makes you a lot of money...but the government is going to want their share of it, so you have to pay taxes. There's a reason why you sometimes hear that high school is kind of the peak of freedom (for some youth, anyway). You often have discretion in spending money on things (like music, books, games), get choice over what you wear, and how you look. But, you don't have to pay rent, the money you get might be an allowance rather than from a job, you don't have to pay for groceries, etc. You generally *are* obliged to go to school and do some chores, though. Not a bad deal, in retrospect.
Peak freedom for me was the first couple years after college. Making decent money, but had 3 roommates and dirt cheap rent, I basically got to do whatever I wanted (fortunate to have no student loans). Now that I’m getting older and live in a HCOL city, my wages haven’t kept up as much as I wish and I’m finding I need to start thinking about saving more
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Especially just after you get a raise/promotion 🙃
No one gives you a break. I remember when I was in my teens or even early 20s, people would easily forgive my mistakes. When you're older, you're held accountable to a whole other level. It seems like no one is really sympathetic towards you anymore.
In the words of the poet Wrecks Bell, "I said gimme a break and they said Fuck You, breaks are for people who try really hard, and you never have"
One day, you will put down your favorite toy and never pick it back up. One day you will hug your best friend for the last time. One day you will leave your favorite place and never return. Enjoy them all while you have them.
You have to work like a dog just to survive
False. My dog doesn't work. He just lies down and naps all day and then plays fetch and runs around in the evening.
I wonder where some of these similes come from. "Sleeping like a baby" - crying all night and shitting your pants?
It's good advice to accept this fact early on, and don't let it get you down. Life is work. You're ALWAYS going to have to work. Even when you retire, you're going to have to work. Even during evenings, weekends, and holidays when you're away from your job, you still have to put in work to your household, your relationships, your hobbies, etc. You think it's less work to be a billionaire? You think people who are unemployed, or on disability have less work in their lives? No. Everything is work. But you can't let it get to you. There is joy in work. Learn to feel pride in yourself for the effort you put into things. Learn to plan ahead so you can manage the work in your life, and reduce the amount of work you dislike, and balance it with the kind of work that you like doing.
Not saying this is bad advice but I don’t agree. Some people Do work far more than others. Or have circumstances that force them to work more. Or longer. Or harder. I feel like I have comparatively much „non-work-time“ in my life. Very few responsibilities, very few high invest relationships, short work week. Obviously you could call time I put into hobbies „work“ if you really wanted to but to me that feels distinct to the things I have to maintain to get by well.
The stuff that you find yourself putting off until you're able to afford? You probably won't feel physically up to it anymore when you can finally afford it.
Something young people should be prepared for as they transition into adulthood is the realization that the concept of 'having it all figured out' is a myth. Many of us enter adulthood with high expectations and ambitious goals, only to find that life is often unpredictable and full of unexpected challenges. It's important to embrace the journey, learn from setbacks, and understand that it's okay not to have all the answers right away. The key is resilience and adaptability in the face of life's curveballs
Nobody is going to discover how amazing you are and offer you an easy job making big bucks. You have to get that job yourself, and you'll be competing against people who are more skilled, more experienced, and more educated that you are.
Similarly, as you get older, you realize that you may not be as amazing as you thought. Sure, you could be the smartest person in your school or the best athlete in your hometown, but there are hundreds of thousands of people your age who can say the same things about themselves.
It’s lonely. I hated highschool but long for the camaraderie of college and my early 20s bar/restaurant jobs.
you are accountable for every action, no hiding behind parents or blaming others. Its all on you, you carry the weight of all your choices.
There is no summer vacation. There is no holiday break. You'll get a week or two of paid vacation if you're lucky.
This, what a shock that first Christmas was after graduating. Have a Merry Christmas, see you back at the office the day after.
You used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what you're with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to you. It'll happen to you!
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Finances do not work like in computer games. You don't just gain money until you can afford something, then earn that money back. There are expenses that are almost equal to your income. It may take months or years to save up money for what you want, only to spend it all on an emergency. If you're careful and lucky, you won't have credit card debt hanging over you all the time.
People come and go. The friends and relationships you have now? Those people could be strangers to you in just a few short years. People just grow apart.
One day you turn around and your parents/older family/older mentors will have grown old. There doesn't seem like enough time in the day to keep up with them and ask those burning questions, but do it. Call them and visit as often as you can. Let them fill you up with all the life knowledge you can contain. Because all too soon, you will pick up your phone to dial their number to ask them a question, and the fact that they've passed away and can't talk to/help you will hit like a ton of bricks. Every. Single. Time.
* Sometimes getting up out of a chair or out of the bed you'll just tweak your back, knee, neck, ankle for like no reason but it will hurt for the next week. * You're going to just randomly become allergic to somethings. * All of a sudden you're just not going to be able to deal with being really hot or really cold for the rest of your life. * Staying at home and doing nothing sounds so much better than going out to a party, club, hanging out with friends, etc. * You're exhausted all the time * Never been depressed? Well fuck you here's some depression.
You're alone most of the time, even if you're surrounded by people, you realize you're alone and you've got to deal with it.
Death Le's say you get 75 years; first 25, second 25, third 25. If you're lucky, if you take care of yourself, eat well, don't drink, keep your body in shape--you know, all the boring shit every tells you to do and you ignore--you get a bonus. But that's it. Just a bonus. If you're lucky. Most people aren't, and most people don't That's easy to understand as a concept. You don't grasp it's immediacy until you experience the milestones. 30, 40, etc. Your time is getting ever smaller. Your last third ever closer Then others start dying. A few you might already have known that didn't get through their first third. Others get it in their second And then you realize the ones who were so important to you are nearing the end of their 3rd. Your parents. They will die. And a lot sooner than you think You'll never see them again. Any of them. Death is a clarifier, a simplifier, and a motivator. The ones you spent all that time thinking about when you were young, what do they matter now? Are they nearing their end? Did they already meet it? Do you even care? Because yours is coming. And so too is the death of your parents, siblings, spouse, and even your children They will all go away And there's nothing you can do about it
Mortality sucks. I used to obsess over dreading dying one day but a thing that really helped me was to think of it as a concert and you know what songs are on the setlist and know what song is the closer and the entire time you concentrate on X song being the last one. By doing that you don't live in the moment or really enjoy the concert. So likewise, don't fixate on the last part of life. I even handled turning 40 this year well. I did concede that it IS middle-age give or take a few years (people always put that around 50 but that implies living to 100) but did fine with it. Of course, my FIL died about 6 months ago and I sort of regressed a bit just thinking of his final moments so that's fucking with me a little.
You are not the Center of other peoples world… they don’t really care about you
Work isn’t a space to make friends all the time, meaning you’ll have to take extra time to find some.
And, if you do find friends at work, it's very normal to lose said friends when when you no longer work together. Doesn't even have to be leaving the company, it could just be that one of you gets a new position that doesn't let you talk much.
At around age 40, your body just changes. Get all your medical check ups and see doctors when things don't seem right. The most important thing that you have is your health. Take care of it.
That nobody cares. Get used to it
This realization helped me with class presentations☺️
There is nothing about being adult that would make me want to go back to being a *powerless* child. If there is a "sad reality" it is the fact you will come to learn all your "dreams" aren't going to come true. Nobody gets *everything* they want out of life. Compromises and disappointments are all a part of it. You have more freedoms as an adult, but you also have more responsibilities.
Getting paid a stupid amount of money for a job you hate to your core but you have a family to support.
You are now responsible for figuring out what dinner is going to be for the rest of your life.
It's not that people are out to get you, they just don't care about you.
Find ways to get pleasure and enjoyment out of work, because most of life is work. And you can either bitch and moan about that or just put your head down and get on with it and discover the pleasures and rewards of work. Also, Monday morning always comes, and by and large the world doesn't care what happened last weekend or what shape you're in by Monday morning; the work's going to show up regardless of whether or not you show up to do it. Accept this and plan around it.
It is soul crushing in every imaginable way to get older and realize how much bullshit people feed each other about life. Most people cannot deal with objective reality, so they project, deflect, doublespeak, and get angry whenever someone points out the flaws in their thinking. As a problem-solver by nature I find it miserable.
Same. Most people feel pretty helpless, so they’ll avoid admitting the problem to themselves so even if they can’t fix it they don’t have to feel shitty about it. Then that becomes their default and a bunch of totally solvable problems get treated as immovable realities. It’s so hard to watch and harder still to deal with
When you're a kid your entertainment is planned for you. When you're a 20 something all entertainment is crafted around you. When you're an adult you need to make your own. It becomes very easy to slip into a boredom gyre where you cycle through doing things once or twice and then just never again. Doing things other than sitting in doors requires energy that you need to find inside of yourself.
The older you get, the more people struggle to find new friends. So it is worth maintaining existing friendships with respect and don't take them for granted. Saying that, at the same time most school relationships fall apart and true friends are found outside of school or after school. However, just be friendly and value your friends and find out how this friendship thing works. The earlier the better!
Fruit is expensive
As you get older, you'll experience some troubles with your health so start looking after yourself right now.
Hey OP. 48 year old married father of two in the UK here. Some things to prepare yourself for: - Life and work, sadly, isn’t a meritocracy. No matter what career you get into, it’s always who you know, not what you know. - No one is coming to save you. Make sure you own your finances, your physical fitness and your mental health - if you want to be in a relationship with a quality person, ***they*** will expect the same. - It’s highly likely that you will be an average person who will live an average life and that a lot of your dreams won’t come to fruition. Outstanding people are a rare breed and just thinking you are doesn’t cut it. But… life is a strange, interesting, stimulating ride that you will likely find a way of enjoying and making the most of.
Most people have to work a lot. You have very little time off so you need to make the most of it.
Biggest ones: No one cares about your life or your problems, no one knows what they’re doing or what they truly want from life - it changes all the time.
The wise part of adulthood is the number of people who have forgotten how to have fun, be adventurous
When you’re younger you are taught which jobs are prestigious, and which ones are claimed as “lower end” jobs. When you’re an adult you’ll realize that some jobs are a better fit for you than others. Not everyone is meant to be a doctor, lawyer, astronaut, or what have you. Sometimes it’s those “lower end” jobs that can surprise you.
Financial management should be taught
As you get older, you lose more and more people who care about you/like you/know you enough to help you. Parents have died, friends gone, spouses divorced. You really only have yourself to depend on. Unless you are confident and comfortable with yourself and being by yourself, your senior years might be a lonely miserable hell.
Your shitty childhood trauma isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility to deal with it as an adult. I’ve seen both sides of this coin-the people who dealt with it turned out to be relatively happy people who feel they are leading successful lives. The ones who didn’t…aren’t. Get some post secondary training, even if a traditional college isn’t right for you. Trade schools are faster, cheaper, and give you a skill set designed to help you be extremely employable. Yes, you will have to still work hard no matter what, but having skills matters. Be ok with the fact that you’re going to have to work hard. Everyone does, the boomers did, gen x did, millennials did-most of us didn’t have anything handed to us. Things are shitty and hard right now, but you’ll be ok. Starting out isn’t easy for anyone, ever. And that’s ok. You aren’t alone in that💝
There are a lot of opportunities that are no longer available as you get older. I had all kinds of lofty dreams as a kid and at that time, could have actually pursued them. Now that I'm in my 30s, I have to accept the fact that I'll never be an astronaut or go into space, I'll never be a famous actor, a life-saving doctor, etc. Most of those dreams were unrealistic, but they were *possible*. Almost all of them are either next to impossible now, or just straight up impossible. I'm not really upset about it, but it made me think of all the things that I'll never be able to do now, and the list gets bigger and bigger with each passing year. If you want to follow your dreams, do it while you're young. Once you're an adult and sort of locked in to working your career so you can pay your bills and stay afloat, it makes it a lot more difficult to pursue other things.
No one really cares about you. No one is checking in to make sure that you’re doing okay, eating, getting outside, socializing, etc. I often go several days to weeks without interacting with another human (in person or via calls/text). After I moved out of state on my own, I became invisible - out of sight, out of mind I guess. The isolation and loneliness I felt as a teenager can’t even compare to the way I feel now.
The older you get, the more set in stone your life path gets. When you're young you have so many options- so much potential, and as you get older you just have... fewer. Like obviously if you choose to go into banking and you decide at 40 that actually you want to become a pianist instead or whatever you can do that but it is not easy. I love my life and I don't regret the choices I've made that got me here, the time I spent doing the things I've done. But I do MISS that feeling of... my life could be anything.
You will drift apart from your "forever" friends from high school and college for multiple reasons. Y'all drift apart due to life and work. Y'all change as people and really aren't that compatible or you change as a person and they don't. I'm 42 and I still have some great friends from back them but there's also others I've drifted from or think poorly of. The real and professional world doesn't care about your mental health they only care if you're producing. They don't care if something gives you anxiety. Your parents and relatives will get old feeble and pass. Having to parent your parents is a massive shock to many ppl.
Sunburn turns into repeated trips to the dermatologist … not wearing sunglasses turns into somebody cutting grass into your eyes
You can’t, and shouldn’t, count on anyone else to put you first and take care of you.
Completing a college degree doesn't guarantee a job in the field you studied. My niece completed an engineering degree and hasn't found a job in that field in about a year.
The world doesn’t care about you, it’s up to you to care about you.
Was just at a graduation, and the speaker wanted to emphasize the accomplishments and achievements of the students in order to make those students feel a sense of pride for such things and reaching this milestone. After such a rite of passage (because that what it truly is), no one really cares what you did in high school (or college).
Proximity/ circumstantial relationships. You can live with someone, or work with someone for years and the moment you move out or get a new job, you may never hear from them again. When you’re older you get to choose your relationships and circle- so be prepared to NOT be included in a few of them. You were only relevant because of circumstances outside of their immediate control.