| Metallox said: Is anyone here in his 30s or 40s sad, or sad sometimes, that the juvenile days are long gone? |
It's me, so prepare for a very stream-of-consciousness reply:
I'm 38 and have made a pretty good mess of my life, so yeah I miss the days before I did that a lot. I'm still single and childless, I live in poverty and work a worthless dead-end job and have no idea how I would ever qualify for anything better at this point. The truth is that I'm living pretty much the same way I did in my late teens and that makes me feel like a failure. I seriously fear that I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life and my age doesn't exactly reassure me in that regard. I live in a place where most people are older than me though, so I don't feel so ancient IRL as I do on gaming forums. 
So at least that.
What I've learned to do is to try and look for the good things in life. It's a choice and by no means an easy one most of the time for me. The perspective that keeps me going is that a moment of joy, like something that makes me laugh for example, makes a day worthwhile. That's the philosophy I've sought to adopt.
I wouldn't call myself wise because if I were wise, I'd probably be doing better at this stage of life. I would say that I've learned things though just by living. Like I see cyclical patterns to events where I didn't before and stuff. I also find that I tire a lot more easily both physically and mentally. Just live with a perpetual kind of exhaustion with the world and with life, which is ironic considering how rarely I've even ventured outside of the town where I was born. I feel like there's so much more to be explored and discovered out there, but I'm destined to just rot here forever. I'm ironically bored to the point of exasperation by the tedium, predictability, and slow-burn deterioration of my life yet increasingly lacking the energy to indulge my curiosities and learn new things. It's more and more tempting to just fall back on the things I already know I love and keep listening to the same songs forever, playing the same games over and over, watching the same movies over and over, and not want to explore new technologies and stuff (still have no mobile phone in 2021) and keep up with the Joneses because it's too exhausting to even think about. This is how people become closed-minded and it's more and more tempting to give into as I get older. I'm making a conscious choice to avoid giving into that impulse favoring laziness, but it's getting tougher not to because it's so much easier to settle for the familiar even though I'm sick of it.
Also, my reflexes are getting to be shit and I forget things way more easily than I used to.
All this said, conversely lots of things that got me really excited or angry when I was younger just don't anymore. I'm less idealistic and excitable than I used to be and accordingly more annoyed by outrage culture and also less blown around by fads. To put matters perhaps more firmly in perspective on that, you know how when you're ten, a five year old seems like they belong to a different generation? Or like how when you were 18, you might have seen a 13-year-old that same way, as like a generation apart from you? I still feel that way. Like someone who's five years younger than me, like a 33-year-old, is a naive, excitable kid in my mind even though they obviously aren't objectively. Most 33-year-olds are probably way more mature and accomplished and in touch with the times than I am in reality. I don't know why my brain still plays that same trick on me.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 13 February 2021
