Poll: what's the worst part of getting old?

aero OTM

voted for the wide-ranging "Reduced energy levels"

I don't think the lack of wonder is because we're adults. Most of us grew up in a generation where you were encouraged to learn/become familiar with everything as quickly as possible to not appear stupid because that's really the worst thing that could happen. This will get you well jaded long before adulthood IMO. My mom didn't grow up like that and she is still fascinated and delighted by new people and places. She: 'Everybody has a story to tell!' Me: 'Ugh. TMI!' She: 'Look at the magnificence of that view!' Me: 'I'm pretty sure I could improve it in Photoshop.' etc

xposts ahoy

also my greatest fear - too much time to reflect and contemplate. fuck that! I set my life up very carefully so my brain will never be unoccupied for long enough to contemplate or reflect on anything.

The real worst part of getting old: Getting old alone.

― Back up the lesbian canoe (Laurel), dinsdag 10 mei 2011 17:44 (56 seconds ago) Bookmark

And this: don't you think that everyone gets old alone, whether you do it alone alone, or next to someone else?

Well, "getting old alone" is just shorthand. My sadness is rly about not having someone else who is a co-repository for memories of younger days. Friends and family, yeah, but not for the more intimate stuff, plus friends and family all have their OWN lives and you can't take them everywhere you go over the years like you basically do to your spouse/partner, to remind you who you are in all kinds of environments where you don't have normal reference points.

Hmm, can't you be your own repository? Isn't the alternative staying with someone while growing apart?

saddest ilx thread ever?

Like more and more years of my life are happening w no one to witness them except me, and I am an unreliable narrator, I guess, and not enough for myself to feel anchored to anything. I fear spending my whole life this way! It will be like I never existed anywhere except in my own thoughts!

Who needs to be a repository?

voted for 'Deteriorating hearing' -- i feel like i could at least theoretically deal with a lot of the other things fine if i'm still able to sit around and listen to music as much as i want, without that a lot of life would be less tolerable

hmm, maybe if i get alzheimer's, hipsters will pay me a lot of money to be a demented old folk artist. i can design sufjan stevens album covers.

over the last 5/10 years i have experienced most of these in varying degrees except dental problems, reduced libido and hair loss. I've thinned on top but there's so little grey I can't complain. The libido thing is a problem cause women my age can lose interest in sex before men (an MD told me that).

anyway voting: awareness of mortality

my nails haven't thickened or turned yellow, either. thank god

what, no complimentary BEST part of getting old poll?

"outliving your enemies"

"pants up to HERE"

"able to get away with saying just about anything you want in public"

"senior discounts"

"yelling 'get off my lawn' at young whippersnappers'

"getting drunk after one beer"

"sex without birth control"

"grandchildren"

Whre is the "all of the above" options :(

Laurel, I will be your Boswell.

yr friends/loved ones start dying on you :-(

ward fowler aged 44 2/3

This'll sound--what's that word again?--tautological, but the worst part of getting old (50 in October) is realizing I won't be young again. I can't see Taxi Driver for the first time again, I can't hear After the Gold Rush for the first time again, etc., etc. 97% of the music, films, and baseball players I'll ever care about are behind me. (I figure I've got more latitude with books, so that's good.) And I tend to run that stuff into the ground, with nothing to replace it.

well, you'll never be old again either

Yes...As Jerry told George, "That's okay--it'll all be over in another 40 or 50 years."

The feeling of time running out, and the self-imposed pressure of feeling you should be making the most of each moment.

Yes this, totally. I have started to feel regret that I never used to. "wait, I'm not done yet", wishing I'd planned on buying a house a lot sooner (ie at all), regretting some of the timewasting relationships I was in, and basically, not wanting to die :/

The thing that annoys me the most is that anytime I'm sore or injured - from exercise, headache, accident, whatever - it both takes longer to recover and sets off a panic that it's some sort of horrible disease or ailment that I've avoided until now. Like I get sore from raking and other lame shit and feel that my sore shoulder equals impending heart attack.

It's weird to have so many people OTM-ing the loss of wonder - I can't ever imagine this happening. I'm probably more this way now at 37 than I was at 17 when I was a moron and didn't have disposable income and the internet. I'm constantly amazed at how many awesome things there are that I still have to learn about, and super excited that my job lets me just take random college courses for free. Plus now I have a TINY MAGICAL BOX that I can carry a hundred records on and use to communicate with everyone I know, can show me pictures and maps of anywhere in the world, and it's capable of answering any question that I have instantly.

Shakey OTM, a "best part of aging" companion poll would be good.

the thing about your sense of wonder is that it's something you don't exactly have to guard, but you do have to guard against the things that threaten it i.e. you have to not cultivate jadedness even though young cats are very keen to affect as jaded a posture as they can early on because it reads as worldly + plus when all yr peers are striking the jaded pose it's hard to not fit in; you have to stay hungry for new stuff even as you're realizing that slowing circuits are going to mean it takes more work as time progresses to really come to an understanding of the new stuff you're choosing to get into, but it's worth it to put in the extra work because you basically get to stay young forever if you do, etc. tbrr this is why when some of the young cats on ilm do their hatin'-on-stuff routine I think "you guys are seriously fucking yourselves up, strike that pose a while longer and see what it does for your feeling of newness down the line" and so on...which is v. "make that face & it'll stick that way" I know, but as far as I'm concerned is true -- if you spend your younger years cultivating an I'm-already-over-it persona, you may not enjoy the feeling you have when you actually legitimately feel over-it all the time and you miss the openness you intentionally killed.

this problem has afflicted a number of people I know is why I mention it.

Following up on that, aero -- my wife helped me come up with the list of poll options this morning, and I was updating her on this thread this afternoon when she, my daughter and I were out to eat. I mentioned that "losing one's sense of wonder" had come up, and without knowing what we were referring to, my daughter said "losing your sense of wonder isn't as much of a problem as feeling like you can't talk about your sense of wonder without getting mocked."

You have raised a wise daughter!! Awesome!!

It's weird to have so many people OTM-ing the loss of wonder

For me at least I OTMied it in the sense of the loss of wonder at the little everyday things. When you're a child EVERYTHING is amazing and new and awesome and as you grow up that inevitably goes away. You can still find the little everyday things awesome but it's different and doesn't usually inspire the pure giddy excitement that it does in kids.

I'm constantly amazed at how many awesome things there are that I still have to learn about.

I mean, this is true for me too. Absolutely. I'd sort of worry about people from whom it wasn't.

How "old" is old? My father passed away last year after a long illness but his biggest complaint until the last six months of his life were deteriorating vision and hearing. Frankly that is the part that scares me the most.

I guess it depends on how physically active you are. My dad was gardening, lifting weights and riding a bike until his last year.

The great fear is of some sort of degenerative illness, forcing an active mind to live in a sedentiary body.

Then again:

1) I was quite poorly between the ages of 24 to 28, and actually I didn't feel much like going clubbing/eating marv meals, etc. So, the mind adapts to circumstances...
2) A famous author had some sort of alzheimers (was it Doris Lessing?), her husband famously remarked that by the end she loved watching the Teletubbies. OK, that seems like horror, but it's still a happy body/mind...

It's that fear that makes people suicidal at the first instance of forgetting something that should be solid within memory (name of husband/wife/kids, that sort of thing)

Hangovers.
Hangovers.
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Hangovers.
Hangovers.
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Hangovers.
Hangovers.
Hangovers.
Hangovers.
Hangovers.
Hangovers.
Hangovers.

Naah, they were always awful, it's just that you can't remember what they were like when you were 18 (for example)...

It's weird to have so many people OTM-ing the loss of wonder

It's not really a conscious thing, it's just the way it is. I'm always open to a new film or piece of music knocking me out, and now and again, that does happen. But when I think about how (to use the same two examples) Taxi Driver and Neil Young hit me when I was 17 or 18, it's just highly unlikely that anything will overwhelm me to the same degree again.

No but there are compensatory pleasures and other ways of being surprised by joy...and recognizing it when it comes.

Absolutely. Believe me, I absolutely hate jadedness. I've always told myself that if that ever creeps into my writing, I'll simply stop writing. It's the most tiresome thing in the world.

my immediate answers today are "my knees" and "the morning after eating Indian food."

so these nails youre talking about are toenails, right?

I absolutely must expand my vocabulary.

Worse hangovers!

when I think about how (to use the same two examples) Taxi Driver and Neil Young hit me when I was 17 or 18, it's just highly unlikely that anything will overwhelm me to the same degree again.

Nothing wrong with raising your standards

Is that because now you can afford to drink more? (xpost)

When I see this thread title I can't ward off "The best part of wakin up.... is Folger's in your cup!"

Like more and more years of my life are happening w no one to witness them except me, and I am an unreliable narrator

This is the problem with people thinking fiction is like life, in which all narrators are unreliable.

I enjoy doing things in which the absence of witnesses is a plus.