1y ago

What has been the biggest surprise about getting older?

174 comments

I think it's that you don't feel older mentally. I though I would feel a certain maturity once I reached an age where I had a solid, advancing career and owned a house. Turns out, I feel pretty much the same and am just better at dealing with things that arise and pretending that I'm mature. My body hurts more and my face looks older, but I don't feel all that different. I'm sure I've mentally changed to some extent, and I notice it more when I talk to younger people, but I still feel the same.
- This. Still feel and act as I did at thirty. This is going to get sad eventually.
  So far nothing like my 'parents' thankfully.
  
  I used to think this. I was in my late 20s but still felt like a teenager in my head.
  At some point in the last few years, after I crossed into my early 30s, I realized that wasn't true anymore. I don't feel like a teenager, I just feel like a 20 something now. Which is still incorrect but there's definitely been a shift.
  Maybe it stopped because when I'm around teenagers, I realize how much distance I feel from them. Not in a "kids these days" way, just in a general sense. A feeling like "...oh...I'm not like this anymore. I remember being like this, I still kind of am, but I haven't really been like this in a while." The juxtaposition is so evident that my unconscious self-perception can't maintain the denial.
  I certainly don't feel my age, but my "internal age" (so to speak) has progressed a bit. I guess it's a sliding scale.
- I think that you don't even notice yourself maturing because it is so gradual. It comes very slowly with life experience. You don't do something impulsive or you handle an emotional situation a little better or you make a difficult decision that younger you wouldn't. I think back to even just a few years ago sometimes and think "What a fuckin idiot that guy was". Sounds like pretending to be mature is almost the same thing as being it
- I don't really feel different or more mature or smarter or something, but starting to notice just plain... I dunno, experience? Like I see an 18 year doing something stupid, and I know it's stupid because I did the same thing.
  Thankfully, I also still realize just how useful and appreciated my advice will be, so I keep quiet.
  But yeah, the BIG generational gap I'm noticing is that I'm okay with playing. Like, gaming, rpg, boardgames, larp. That's cool with my generation and the newer ones. But for the vast majority of 50+ people, admitting that you like having fun is anathema for some reason.
  
  Like I see an 18 year doing something stupid, and I know it's stupid because I did the same thing.
  It's weird becaude I never identified with any of this. I never did anything wild and crazy in my teens and so I've never understood when people excuse wild and self destructive behavior as "they are just teens and they'll learn".
  I don't mean to say that I've always been more mature than my peers (my humor is very crude and immature)...just that I have never understood being impulsive and reckless, even as a teen.
  
  But yeah, the BIG generational gap I'm noticing is that I'm okay with playing. Like, gaming, rpg, boardgames, larp. That's cool with my generation and the newer ones. But for the vast majority of 50+ people, admitting that you like having fun is anathema for some reason.
  I'm in my 40s and noticed that as well. People 10 years older than me (now in their 50s) have been telling me I'm too old for games for over 20 years now. I kind of feel bad for them, like they just missed out on being able to enjoy games. Personally, I'm looking forward to LAN parties in the nursing home.
- Agreed. I’m almost 50, but I still feel like I’m in my 20s in many ways.
- I heard someone say, “We don’t grow up, we grow old”
- Preach. I just turned 45 and I'm finally starting to physically feel older, but mentally I feel better than ever. I had a lot of mental issues due to being raised in an abusive household and I finally buckled down and got a lot of therapy. I'm not 100% and never will be, but I'm 90% and fighting for more every day. It's great, feeling like I actually have my shit together.
  Talking to younger people, people in their twenties mostly, is a bit depressing, though. I'm so out of touch with their culture and I don't know where to even start to get caught up. One lady offhandedly said something "slaps" and I had to ask if that's good or bad. Ughhhhhhhh.
  
  Exactly!
- I came here to write this.
  I can only add that with years I started doing the same stupid things with no regrets.
  Looking back, it would be hard to explain to the younger me, that there are no adults, but just ugly kinds.

This hit me more than a decade ago but the realization that nobody really knows what they're doing. Most people wing it their entire lives.
- This one, everyone is winging it, and hopefully you get enough smart people in a room together they can come up with a solution.
  
  Cooperative smart people. (someone who works with a lot of uncooperative smart people, smarter than me at least)
- I was watching Peep Show recently and at one point Mark says "The world's just people walking around, going in to rooms and saying things." and that's the most succinct description of how the world works I think.

How fast time passes. Years pass very quickly now and the view of the end is approaching faster than I would like.
- You didn't ask for advice, but please consider journaling or writing a personal blog. I find that the time passes faster because I have fewer novel experiences as I get older. If I put a dedicated effort into remembering what was unique about my recent days, it feels like I live more of them.
  
  Came here for the life pro tips, this is exactly what I was looking for!
  
  Yeah I'm guessing this has to be why time feels to pass faster. When you're growing, there are so many milestones and rapid changes from ages 0 to maybe 22. Beyond that, everything is the same until you die. That's an interesting way to make it longer.
- Each time period (week, year etc) is a smaller proportion of your life.
  Anything that happened when I was much younger can't be resolved easily to the nearest year, unless I can identify a specific immutable event like a specific birthday.
  
  I've found making playlists based on music releases from each year helps with this.. for me I can almost immediately remember a year or time period just by hearing a song

Mentally, I still feel like I am the same person as back when I was a teenager, until I actually meet some real teenagers and thought "oh, they are a bunch of children.", and then "wait, was I actually as immature as them when I was a teen? That's not the way I remembered it."
- Exactly! When I was younger I wasn't that immature and stupid... Thinks back to when I was younger. OH! Shit. Yes I was.
  
  It's nice to have somewhere where I can stop being a grown-up for a little bit and make some dumb jokes.

The toll of core life events. Having a child, taking care of elderly grandparents/parents. I thought it would be easier. Not easy but "he's not heavy; he's my brother" kind of easier. Maybe it's me, but it feels like I'm constantly running on empty. Caregiver burnout is a real beast.
- Yes, being someone’s caregiver can burn you out in ways you didn’t know you could get burnt out. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of being in two end-of-life care giver situations for immediate family in my life and I still haven’t fully realized the complete toll that has had on me.
- I'm constantly telling my wife that I feel like I've been in emergency red alert mode for the past year and a half and the idea of another child just frightens me. You want to do this shit again? This has been the worst experience of my life. She keeps saying the next one won't be special needs but I'm good, no more kids for me, divorce me and marry someone else if you need to do that.
  
  Man, that hurts. Even minor needs can make parenting double difficult in a world designed now for both parents working. I hope it gets better.
- I feel like every conversation I have with my wife at the end of the day is which of us is able to convince the other that we are the more tired one.

Each additional decade of age seems half as long as the previous one was.
0-10 took forever
10-20 took 20 years
20-30 took 10 years
30-40 took 5 years
I'm 40 and it feels like 50 is next year already.
- Uff... I felt this.
  This is for you. From another comment
  Even WWII is closer to my birth than I am.
  
  Ffuuuuuccckkkk meeeeee
  WHY did you make me realize this?
- That makes sense based on your perception of time. 0-10 was your whole life doubling, over and over. 10-20, your life doubled. 20-30 your life will increase 33%. And so on.
- This is a rough one.

The amount of pure bullshit I have to go through every day just for an hour of enjoyment in the evenings.
- Dude, retirement is where it's at. I retired early and it's amazing. It took sacrifices (modest home, aggressively paying off mortgage, no fancy cars) but it's so worth it. Most people don't take good enough care of themselves and by the time they retire they no longer have their health. :(

I think seeing how fast many people turn into people they would not have liked when they were younger. It's probably part of growing up but many people seem to not remember what they wanted to do better than their parents.
- This is painful. My wife's friend turned into her (wife's) mother, the person who she previously claimed she most hated. In this individual's case it's that when she had kids she stopped caring about doing better.
  
  For me it was the opposite. I remember one day, when i had only one very young child, that i sounded like my mother. That was the incentive to turn it around. It was hard work and there was no internet yet to give me advice.
  Also, when my kids were in their teens i found it very helpful when i read a brochure about triple p parenting. I could not join them for a course, but the tip that changed a lot was; complimenting my kids instead *for good behavior *of berating them when they did something that was not 'good'. The results were really good and i felt happier in the process, because it was much nicer to compliment my kids instead of hearing yourself being annoyed when they did something 'bad'.
  Edited to add a clarification, in italics
  
  I've noticed 99% of parents become so fucking boring to hangout with. They either stop coming out, or are tame versions of their past selves.
- I can see how life has brought out deep compassion in me. But I imagine my younger self would hate me and think of me as a pushover who is not enjoying life, basically a loser who wasn't radical enough.
  
  "I didn't sell out, son, I bought in. Keep that in mind."

How "not old" everything is. I'm not old, but when I was young I thought people my age were at the general end of one's life. People also are surprisingly clueless.
- Same idea but in, perhaps, a different sense:
  When I was young, landing on the moon and the US war with Vietnam were all “in the past” and when I was young everything “in the past” had equal weighting and distance from my existence.
  As I get older, I look back on things with the perspective of equidistance, time-wise, from my birth (or sometimes from ~adulthood) and events within that ever growing range start feeling like “not that long ago”
  The Vietnam war ended only 3 years before I was born!
  Apollo 11 was less than a decade before I was born. I’ve experienced that 9 year timespan three times in conscious memory and five times in my life.
  Even WWII is closer to my birth than I am.
  Heck, even the Great Depression was just starting to recover.
  The older I get, the more recent everything seems.
  
  I relate very much with you on this comment.
  It's bizarre to me these days to really realize and contemplate how close events like WW2, Kennedy's assassination, the moon landing, Woodstock, etcetera actually all were to my birth.
  But as a child and even into my early 20s most of those events felt like practically an eternity away.
  It really puts it into perspective when I think about the fact that I moved out of my parents' home and started working full time over 30 years ago...
  First saw the Grateful Dead in concert over 30 years ago... They'd already been performing for over 25 years at that point and seemed like such a massive juggernaut that had just sort of always been around.
  
  when I was young everything “in the past” had equal weighting and distance from my existence.
  As a young person I relate to this feeling. Sometimes I forget how close to my birth some historical events were. Like, 9/11 was just a couple years before my birth, and the end of the USSR was closer to my birth than I am (and by quite a margin). Which... to me, the USSR feels very much "in the past".

How much disdain I have for change (“they are just making it worse!”) aka grumpy old man syndrome
- If it was around before you were born, it's perfectly natural.
  If it was invented when you were younger than 10, it's new, cool, and exciting.
  Invented between ages 10 and 25? Innovative.
  Between 25 and 40? Silly to replace something that was working fine.
  Over 40? The work of the Devil!!
- Many things are really just getting worse, though.
  I'm in my 20s, I love new stuff, and am excited for new technologies...
  But the stuff that existed for the last 5-10 years? Yeah, they're just getting objectively worse. From social media, to Google, to basically almost anything that private companies control.
  Not everything is getting worse, but enough are that it may be difficult to discern at times.
  
  Enshittification is real and driven by profits. We're out of the "wild west" phase of the internet, companies are now trying to capitalize every last square inch of it.
- I used to be with it, then they changed what it was. It'll happen to you.
- I work in IT. I tell everyone once I retire all the electronics are gone and I'll be on my front porch shaking my fist at the clouds.
- Am I so out of touch?
- Honestly, this one sometimes surprises me too.
  Like, I'm okay with it... I've accepted being the grumpy old man but it still surprises me how often it feels like my default state the older I get.

I've only gotten MORE healthy and strong.
My sex drive hasn't gone down like media tells me
Retirement is a fantasy
When I look at homeless people I think 'that could be me in 4 months if I miss 2 weeks of work.
- Oh my... the homeless quote hit me hard.

That i succeeded in raising my children much better than my parents raised me. As a result, my now adult kids are happy, compassionate, have a good life, and they really love me :-)
- Breaking the cycle will be our generations legacy
  
  I was very relieved that it was possible

I’m just tired man.
- My friends a GP in the UK and they've said there's been an increasing amount of people come in for "tiredness".
  It's probably more about the state of this world rather than your age
  
  Yeah you’re not wrong.
  I feel like I can’t get ahead. Always running. Hell, I even do well for myself, good job and income. There’s always “just one more [X]”. And then we die.
  
  Chronic anxiety is bad for your body in plenty of ways.
- Yea sure, but that’s a phase that will pass.

Increasingly getting the “I don’t give a single fuck” superpower.
- My 'resolution' this year was to be ruder to people. I've spent my whole adult life feeling obliged to be chronically nice and polite at all times. It's definitely the right position to take generally but sometimes a little bit of rudeness is warranted. I don't have to let old people at the bus stop talk at me rather than with me; I can tell them to fuck off if they're being bigoted or obnoxious. I don't have to let the pharmacist condescend to me when I was right about my prescription being ready; I can say 'I told you so', no matter how childish it might be.
  The I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude has done wonders for my mental health
  
  Same. If I hear you say out loud some anti-lgbtq crap you read on Facebook I'm calling you out, and I don't need to be a prick about it, but condescension goes a long way.
- I've acquired this recently and it's made work a lot easier to deal with.
  I've realised nobody ever gets fired in the company I work in (and I would 100% take the severance package if offered redundancy). I've spent 8 years being a team player, giving extra hours for nothing, and becoming one of the most knowledgeable people in the world for our system, only to be given a middle finger of a raise after a 6month fight (in which I was told almost immediately they'd take care of me and I'd be happy with it.
  Well. Fuck them and their 7.5%.
  Ill take the minimal amount of extra cash but as far as I'm concerned that's SOME of my back pay for the efforts over the last 8 years. I am putting 10% effort into my job and 90% into finding a new one now (which will come with another 5% for a sideways move anyway).
  A few years ago I wouldn't be able to stop myself trying to please everyone even after all that, it's so refreshing being able to turn off that switch which says I should care about my job. All it took was nearly a decade of mistreatment before realising they didn't give a shit about me....

The thought of dying gains more optimism because you get more and more fatigued by people and their bullshit. The toxicity, self-entitlment, tribalism, narcissism, hate... There's enough of them out there to just ruin it all enough that it gets exhausting and saddening. I figure by my old age, I'll be happy with checking out.
If there's an afterlife and it has to be shared with people of Earth again, I'll be so pissed off.
- Yeah, the aging process definitely makes death seem less and less undesirable.

How much older people "don't know fuck about fuck".
As youngling I thought elder know something and I believed them.
Now I know they didn't know anything, same as me and my friends don't.
- This is the reason my wife and I will admit we don't know to our kiddo. When possible we explain how we can find out. Growing up without a sense of how being older actually is has been wild.

How much everything still hurts. Physically, emotionally, everything. How much I hate that I'm still trucking away, trying to do the right thing.
And it's so lonely.
- It doesn’t have to be lonely. Just find some hobby and join a group. Most people younger or older feel great about having older people talk about projects and things they’re passionate about. It’s surprisingly welcoming.
  
  It's kind of a privilege to have time or energy for things like that. I'm a single parent of abused children with significant mental health issues, and was a victim myself. Any time I find is spent maintaining my house or crying into my pillow. If my oldest manages to become a functional adult, maybe I'll eke out some scraps of energy.

The fact that I continue to grow older. I've had multiple horrifically potentially fatal health issues that should have killed me decades ago but I'm still here and somehow healthier. Wtf.
- So agreed. Living on includes facing death. It's kinda confusing, this strong idea we have of The End. Reality is we get to think its over many times before it is.

When I was a kid I thought adults knew stuff and had life figured out. I grew up to realize that no one knows shit.
- Same. Grown ups have all the answers. Until I became one and learned there are 3 types of grownups: -people who think they have the answers and think you are the dumbass -people who know they don't know stuff and only sometimes think you are the dumbass -people who don't know stuff, don't know what they don't know, could not give a crap about what they should know and you are in their way.
- Bah! I had everything figured out by 15! Stupid adults would never listen.

It turned out that I couldn’t be or do anything I wanted after all. All that money I earn goes to other people.
- Yeah they say things like "just be yourself" and "you can do anything" but generally if you actually try it people get really mad lol.

Mid-shaft hairs.
- Do you shave your shaft? Lol
  
  Needs must
- Aint no way

How often I need to get up at night to pee.
- Flomax. Life changer.

How much more slowly injuries heal. Get a cut on your hand? That'll take two weeks to heal. Catch a cold and you're down for a solid week. I'm only in my 30's but I feel like a decade ago it would have only taken a few days to recover from a minor injury or illness.
Edit: Thanks for the concern guys. I really do appreciate it. I get checked out fairly regularly. "Two weeks" is probably an exaggeration. I just mean it takes longer than it used to.
- I'm only in my 30's
  That's a little bit worrisome. It should happen only at maybe 60. Talk to a doc and maybe have your blood tested or something.
- You might have problems with your insulin levels, better check with the doctor.
- Cuts still heal just fine for me about I'm about to hit 30, maybe you have some nutrient deficiencies?

How many people actively vote and influence against their own self-interest

I was very surprised to find that I feel more calm, more balanced, more confident and true to myself, less worrisome and controlling, and just generally happier with every passing year.
I've had a very sharp mind, but I must confess I've noticed it slowing a little in the last few years. One of the mysterious benefits of that is now it causes me to reflect for just an extra moment before I respond. That has opened up so many more lines of communication and understanding in my personal relationships.
I didn't realize how much younger women would love older guys with some grey. I didn't realize how many women thought going unshaven and looking like a bag of shit (joking here but not)... was incredibly sexy.
I got a lot of experience seeing relationships all around me, and my own. And I came to discover some things about how we work inside. Majority of people never figure it out, but a lot of people do around 40. I found it very refreshing and surprising to see that within others, and it was a really cool light bulb going off for me when I got it.
I was super surprised to find out that despite my thrashing, really mostly my life was a series of random events or unlikely confluences. That is to say, through experience and reflection, I discovered that we really have far less influence in our own lives than we think. This goes for the high points and the low points.
I was really shocked actually to see how little emotional maturation there generally was as I watched my peers age alongside me. I know people who are in their 50s and 60s who do nothing except gossip in a sinister way about everybody and stir up shit. I am aware of a group of 50-year-old women wherein a marketing director got into a spat with 3 other women over a man at our social group, which ended with slashing tires. I really, really did not expect to see this kind of insanity at my age. And it still surprises me every time I see it, I must be naive at this point for giving people the benefit of the doubt.
I'm very surprised how quickly life changed from being so bored you purposely extend a poop from 2 minutes to 20 while you read the shampoo bottle for the 50th time... To the point where there isn't a single second in our day where interaction isn't available! We wouldn't miss a phone call for the world in the '70s-90s even if it meant jumping off the garage roof in the middle of reshingling to answer in time. I'm surprised at how bored I feel with more media to consume than ever before.

It gets worse every family member you lose... You don't get used to it. It just gets worse and worse.

That I just keep getting older. I kind of expected a bunch of life events into my mid thirties, but I was pretty hazy about everything after that. Now here I am, getting older, not really sure what to do.
- And the other way around: the banality of everyday. Large parts of my working life are just a blur, because so little of relevance happened. My life is just kind of running on autopilot.
  
  The autopilot sucks. My work is interesting, but I stopped doing a lot of things when we had kids, and I stopped even more when the pandemic hit.
- I have never planned for getting this old,no idea what to do.

That I started to not care about latest tech gadgets, and I just want to use old reliable ones that just work for my use cases. In fact I still don't understand the point of tablets, except some rare use cases, and I still prefer my desktop computer to anything else.
- I saw that change happen with my boss.
  He got an iPhone 3G when it came out and then every year when Apple would release a new phone he HAD to have the latest one as soon as it came out.
  Once Apple released the iPhone X he changed his tune and got fed up with the UI changing around and unfamiliarity and decided to stick with his 8 and whatever version of iOS until he was forced to replace it.
  
  Huh? iPhone 8 is still supported and good to go. What did force him to change it?
- I've felt the same about tablets since at least when the MacBook Air first came out⁰. I was in my early 20s. I don't think that particular opinion has much to do with age. Tablets are a compromise device. They're in between a phone and a computer but they're worse than both.

How quickly I have fallen behind in knowledge of technology and slang.
- I lost the plot at NFTs and AI.
  
  Crypto is another like those. I know they exist, I know they've lost value lately. I don't "get" them though.
  
  I kind of get AI and cryptos, but NFTs are completely over my head. I don't see the point for starters, other than trying to add artificial value to images on the internet, which are kind of the least valuable thing in the universe. But I also looked into how they worked, and I got about as far as wrapped tokens or whatever it is and then I noped out.
- fr fr no cap
  
  And how many gigs should a gaming computer have? Oh right, normal machines are into the terabytes now. Oh boy.
  
  Oh, they got that rizz

How quickly the second half of my life has gone..i guess it has been filled with more variety and more going on. Could be the monotony of it all too that it all blends in. It's bonkers how quick things pass. I mean, COVID started 4 years ago..where has that gone! I have a 15yo son! l still feel like I'm 21 ..but with less-than-ideal moving body parts. My knees, no pain, just don't move like they used to. I wish I could do half the things i see some 50 year olds doing in the movies..jumping over fences like I used to as a teen..and and and
- Movies are just fantasies lol, but I know what you mean. You can't help sometimes think that half the superhero stuff in movies could apply to you.

everything hurts.

The immense shock of realizing that I am realistically over a third of the way through my life.
- Two thirds for me.

That I still mentally think and feel like I’m 20+ years younger but my body and people around me won’t let me act like it.

The joint pain.
- Came here to post this.
  I had a nurse at an urgent care ask me if I had any joint or muscle pain. (She looked to be in her 50s.) I said "Ma'am, I'm over 40. Everything hurts all the time."
  No one told me getting old would hurt so much.

You realize how some people never grow up and some people never mature. I see these as two separate entities. Having an inner child is one thing, but being completely disrespectful to others like a 5 y/o as a grown person is something else entirely

How quick your body wears out. I'm only 41 and my body is already used up. It is going to be hell for 30yrs from now on.
- 47 and all is well. My take is it has to do with activity and such.
  At least that’s what I observe in my peer group. Those who were in my running group in early 20s, and stuck to at least some level of activity are holding up well. Those who don’t have already experienced serious medical care for this and that.
- Yup. Turning 40 next month. Was having some terrible headaches and neck pain. Low-impact cardio really helps with all of that. Also making sure you sleep well and have pillows that contour to your neck.
- The secret is to keep moving. Lift heavy things and run slow and long. Use it or lose it.
  
  Yea i know but i can't. I had 2 back surgeries. I also never could do cardio, it makes me vomit even when I was a kid. And since the last 5 years it gives me a migraine as well.
  I used to lift weights because it is less cardio and had no problems with it. But then came the back problems and now I'm useless.
  Eye sight deteriorates, tinnitus, broken back and wounds don't heal as fast as they used to. I hate getting old and obsolete.
- Yep, if this is how painful 38 is, I don't think I want to know what 68 is going to look like without a bionic body.
  
  Holy moly for real!
  I slept wrong 6 days ago and my neck, right arm, and back are thoroughly hecked!
  I've been struggling to do anything lol.
  I'm gonna be one of those people with a non-functioning neck for sure.
  
  Yeah no kidding. Where are my cyberware implants lol

The fucking hair.
- Hello fellow hairless dude also turning into a monkey. Hair in nostrils, ears (wtaf), eyelids occasionally.
- Right? Like I knew I'd get a bunch or ear hair. I didn't expect it to be fastest growing hair on my body.
  On the inverse side: I was prepared to be bald one day but I was not prepared for slow balding.

I haven't really changed much as a person. I'm still the same dork I was in my 20.
- Wow, really?
  I have massively changed, to the point I'm almost scared about who I'll be in my 60s (fortunately, due to the boomers it'll probably explode by then, anyway!).
  And I barely trust who I am now, knowing it's inauthentic to my youth identity and probably my elderly identity (why I think there's only 3 - who knows? This isn't really rational)
  Point is, as I've aged I've become more conflicted (I guess in reality, I'm ignoring an existential crisis which bleeds into other topics)

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Everyone my age is angry about something that happened two decades ago and is working off a mental life story that "explains" why they are doing awful things. As if they get angry enough or disagree enough it can somehow backwards correct the unfixable.
I find it surprising that conversations and interactions with my cohort are basically an eternal thanksgiving dinner without the food or happiness. People are reduced to sore points, don't mention x, don't talk about anything related to x, whatever you do dont downplay x. They will demand you take a side about x.

My joints hurt. I'm around 30, and I beat the shit out of my body through my late teens-mid twenties. My joints feel like they're about 20 years older than the rest of me some days. Fun experiences for the most part, but I'm paying for those minor injuries piling up over the years.
- Welcome to the club. Except I'm in my early twenties and never got to beat the shit out of my body, it did it all on its own. But still welcome, I recommend a heating pillow, a weight blanket and staying away from the cold and draft.
  
  Weighted blanket was a game changer. I've always hated the cold, and my disgust with temperatures under 80°F grows with every passing year

How it makes me understand more and more of my parents' actions and opinions that I questioned or condemned when I was younger. So maybe even...becoming more conservative in a way.
- How old are you? I feel like I started off being such an edge lord on the internet, and now at 30 I've never felt more aligned with left leaning ideologies. My father was pretty left leaning as well.
  
  I'm 32. Maybe conservative was not the right word to use. I still consider myself on the left side of the political spectrum (even outside of the US). But every now and then I catch myself in situations, where I would have been a lot more idealistic some years ago. Now there are often thoughts like 'Well, there have to be compromises'. But you made a great point. The shift you go through while growing older may definitely depend on your parents' political views, too.

How much shit I've had wrong with me this entire time that I didn't realize was happening because it wasn't as bad and I was young

Blood in poop?
- Ah, this is worth having checked out.
  99% chance it's just haemorrhoids, which are easily resolved. 1% chance it's something more serious.
  
  Easily resolved, yes. But please don't ignore it. Mine didn't hurt because they were internal so it took an emergency room visit to get me to do something about it. I had to two infusion to get my body right.
  
  I've had the fun time camera experience at the relevant clinic and am on meds but it still flares up now and then. It's believed to be some sort of autoimmune condition but it wasn't explained in a way I can confidently say I understand.

The fact that history gets shorter as I get older

Your actions, whether good or bad, will eventually affect you. Luck, which is defined as the factors that are beyond your control, such as genetics, family upbringing, and place of birth, is a major determining factor in life.

Younger women drooling.
I'm a grey fox, eheh
farts
'scuse me

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