So you've lived most of your life. How do you feel about it?

Post Reply New Topic

Getting close to 40, here. I have some health issues that will likely shorten my lifespan. On the other hand, I'm in good health despite them, and my family tends to be long-lived. So we'll see what happens.

I'm mostly pretty happy with where my life is right now. I worked hard with what I had, but I'm not afraid to admit I got pretty lucky in a lot of ways. Things are going well and I'm trying to keep it that way.

I regret the way I've treated some people.

I also have felt cursed with problems that were outside of my control.

Wrote a lengthy post on this a few minutes ago.

There's a sense that ubiquitous Darwinian game theory and one-upsmanship could close out most of my future as it becomes the thing 'everyone is doing' or is at least forced to do if they don't want to be mugged by those who are doing it. Here's hoping that isn't the case.

Over the 40 line here but it doesn't feel like it (except physically, sometimes!) as I seem to have skipped all the milestones "normal" people go through in their 20s and 30s. You too can be an enigmatic, timeless being - all it'll cost is your career and your personal life! On the plus side, I still get to keep plastic robots in the living room.

I'll be a pensioner in 5 weeks time. Psychologically I'm not handling it well. I've been a good dad, granddad, and great granddad, but I've achieved little else of any merit or value.

I’ve never been a dad….no less a granddad or great-granddad.

Being a good dad is something which happens to elude a lot of fathers.

I did waste a lot of time/money/relationships trying to figure out myself/career/identity but those "lost years" were all part of personal growth *Shrug"

I prefer to not write negative things in public. But being an autist with severe schizoid traits (due to early childhood trauma) is life on ultra hard mode. I'm glad I'm typically emotionally "flat", so it's at least not painful. Would not do it again.

I’m relieved to be past the half way point of my life.

Good advice

A repeating pattern in my life, maybe it's like this for a lot of people who do steady / deliberate self-inquiry, is that every few years I'll start feel like I'm picking up inklings of a new puzzle that I need to be able to put together either to make up lost milestones or at least be a 'more valid' adult. Those disparate pieces will feel like they're coming together, my own subconscious will prod me in ways that suggest that I'm in serious danger if I can't put it together right now even if it's a 5% completed 'inkling' of a puzzle, but I'm stuck admitting that I just don't have enough pieces yet and so I feel compelled to just focus on that feeling hoping it sets up... best words I can come up with for it... a well of gravity that brings other pieces into place and starts giving me the completed critical map or maps that I'm missing (with that said - you can probably see why I like probing these super-abstract terrains with my mind, it's saved my life enough times that I have no reason not to keep working from that place).

I remember the last big map was workplace Machiavellianism, life being 'cheap' not in the legal sense but in very much in the social sense, and that intimation came right before about four steady years of work-related trauma, both vocational and social. Yes, I'd had that experience in my early 20's but somehow I'd been convinced that it was a failure of character, that real adults aren't like that, so it was back through the gaslighting and green paint-slapper until I figured out that no, those are all lies, it's a permanent 'womb to tomb' aspect of being human that probably doesn't stop at any age.

If I'm noticing anything, at least for my experience of it as a guy, is that no one will give you a map. In fact it seems like any wheel you can't invent entirely on your own, or any map that you didn't have the epigenetic instincts toward from the start or parents of the right social class to have prepped you for it deliberately, is a failed litmus test and it just means you're in a lower caste than someone who had that map. This is where my own abilities to pull insight feel like they're pushed to their relative limits - ie. intimations of maps that I need to have my life function better. My best guess is they'll always be ten or fifteen years too late (even if better late than never), simply because this is the consequence of having your start throttled and having to DIY from first principles, but still - IMHO it's not really a choice to not put the effort in and let things go slack. Life is dangerous, and the people too predatory, not to keep moving and not to keep leveling up in whatever ways I can.

i have spent time with elderly people in nursing homes or close to death. the biggest things they talk about are memories. it's all we can carry with us that far. some have dementia but impressions of a life lived are still very strong and it is what is communicated. if a person isn't very verbal in those times, expression still comes in facial or physical movements. when we are younger and busy i think we still think a good bit about memories but maybe don't voice them as much? memories also get skewed by the passage of time. i think we can spend a good amount of time on: "i wish i would have said/done this..." but how can we control the outcome of a moment that already passed? yet we can use that to build better future outcomes i suppose. whatever age i come to in this life, i guess i want to know that i've always communicated to others that i care about my intense gratefulness to them and how much they have contributed to my life as well as the human community as a whole.

I’ll turn 69 at the end of this month.

I made a lot of mistakes and had my share of trauma, but I wouldn’t change a thing because I like where I am now, and changing something would yield a different now.

While I’m aware some people live well into their 90s, I think my life will be shorter due to health problems.

In many ways, I am just barely getting inklings of progress in areas I would like to do more of, especially music. I’d like to live long enough to travel more rivers and make more music.

Disappointed.

I've been in that place and hope that's where I am at when the time comes for me to depart this world. Nobody knows what happens when we die but I can't help but think it's going to be a much more problematic transition if I'm still thinking, "Well I really shouldn't have done that and why didn't I do this instead and if only I had another chance."

If I'm in a good mood I feel a lot more positive about my life and vice-versa. It's the uncertainty at what comes next that's dragging me down at the moment, the prospect of not being able to afford the basics. Not an uncommon worry in the current climate I should imagine.

I relate, I was happy as a young child.

I guess in a way old folks do pull the mental Benjamin Button. I think maybe that's part of happy old age. I became miserable once I started thinking too much...