Want to Be Happy? Think Like an Old Person (2017)
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I don't think younger people should adopt that mindset necessarily. It's good to have ambition while you are young but maybe you shouldn't listen too much to other people. In the end being young is hard. There are so many options for living your life but there is no way to tell which one will be right for you. So there is a lot of luck involved. Some people pick the right path. Many don't.
The best way to not feel old is to spend time with people you connect with, and who don't feel old themselves. There's nothing that's aging you more rapidly than a group of people who drag you down.
A second cousin of mine in his 40s, 50s works at a factory. He did a classics course through the Open University. He still works at the factory, because he likes the work, but he was more than able to do the course, and he felt that he was more prepared for the coursework at that age than if he had done it earlier.
For most people, the options are still there, you're just less likely to see them as an option. Never underestimate your potential later in life. As long as you maintain your levels of exercise and take care of your body, you are on average just as capable to change careers as you were when you were twenty.
As a secondary source, there was recently an Ask Hacker News thread of people who had started their programming careers in their fifties, I sadly cannot find the like :c
Maybe you are capable but the job market is much less welcoming in your 50s compared to being in your 20s especially if you are trying to get into something new. You certainly can learn new things though. No doubt.
I stopped being employable somewhere in my early 20's and I still think that is the best thing that happened to me. It made me think of life not in terms of jobs but in terms of capabilities. You can learn new things and you can pick up new marketable skills and change careers. I did it when I was 42, I see no reason why it could not be done at 50 or older. In fact I know a couple of nice examples of people older than 50 that made radical (and lucrative) career changes.
It's really up to you, your appetite for risk and how much energy you can muster. At 50+ you probably have an advantage over 20 year olds trying to do the same except for the energy factor.
There were many other options to choose from this one I had a bit of a taste from by accident and I decided to see where it would lead. In the meantime I'm firing off all kinds of crazy projects whenever I have some spare time (less so every year due to the service company doubling in size year over year for the last 5 years or so).
It makes good money too, and the customers I have are a lot more appreciative than any of the start-ups (b2c) customers that I had. Also there is enough time left over for a life rather than to be in the rat race all the time. All in all it suits me well, I should have probably done it earlier but apparently I had to run into the wall first before I got the message. I still code, but only when it suits me and I have fun doing it.
--A fellow techie that has done a wide variety of freelancing and consulting the past decade or so; your transition comment caught my eye...
There are two articles on the blog regarding this:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/due-diligence-survival-guide
https://jacquesmattheij.com/due-diligence-survival-guide-par...
Those are already more than 6 years old but they aged quite well.
>Know your business (from a legal, technical and financial point of view)
>If there is bad news get it out of the way as soon as possible, well before the due diligence process starts
>Be truthful and honest
>Don’t fall into the trap of ‘dressing up’ the company, it will come back to bite you during due diligence
>Make sure that those that talk to the people doing due diligence know their stuff to avoid miscommunication
It's surprising to me how few projects - even ones going well - can meet these criteria with a high degree of fidelity.
I've never had a problem getting a job in tech. Last time I was hired was in my late 40s; I'm now early 50s.
I don't work the 50, 60 hour weeks that I used to when I was younger. So if that is what someone is looking for in a candidate I can see why an older person might get passed over.
But I accomplish more in 20 hours now than I did in 60 hours when I was 25.
The kind of jobs I would want, would not hesitate to hire a 50 year old. At least in my experience.
So looking for a job is harder, but when I finally get one, it's funny to work with those young people, who usually have no idea of many things. Example from this week: when you connect to 127.0.0.1 from your machine, it's not connecting you to the testing server.
I think that if you are "old" and you are looking for a job, just don't give up, and ignore all those "young" companies.
Btw, I was always wondering what they will do in 10 years, when all those "young" people will be "too old for them to hire". Will they fire them?
Seems like long term employees are burden. They get old, sick, know their rights. Maybe even start having demands and don't just leave when those are not met making them grumpy.
Which tells you about how well the code is maintained, at the very least.
I can understand hiring simply smarter people though in lieu of experience. It’s just that so many things I’ve lost efficiency on would not have been improved with mere smarts, so only raw, direct experience could ever get past it.
And don't get started on how 'agile' fuels this! In a constant panic mode, there's only ever sprints for small fixes and isolated features. Never time to address what's really wrong in a systematic way. So the flames burn higher...
The current hiring preferences out there are a perfect fit for the industry’s insane “ship crap as fast as possible” product preferences.
The result has worked out really well. Managers have quit hassling me about time and I get given the more complex and interesting work. People know I work hard and care about what I produce, if they have to wait they have to wait. I don't ask permission to write the tests I want, or spend a couple of days refactoring if that needs done.
Basically I am the professional coder, not the project managers, so I don't let them dictate how the software gets made. You just need to make sure you don't take it too far and too gratuitous refactoring work. Your reputation is critical for this approach to work.
At first I though you might be mentioning the “thank you” post[1], but that developer is in their thirties. A bit of searching led me to another post[2], but from 2015, so it may not be the same you were thinking about.
How? I'm only 27 but every time I try to tackle this problem raw panic prevents any reasonable thinking.
I've instead adopted a "when it happens I won't know" mindset and continue to work towards extracting maximum enjoyment from life.
When I was in third grade, one of my brothers was murdered. I felt all the panic of mortality, and intense, visceral grief -- etc that you might imagine. A few years after that, a cousin was stabbed to death. I didn't know him much, and I figured that was the reason why his funeral felt much easier.
My grandmother died in 2007, she was the sweetest lady you'd ever meet. It was even "easier" than the cousin's funeral.
In 2009, an uncle died. In 2010, an aunt. Another aunt died in 2013.
Another one of my brothers always used to say that he never wanted a funeral. When he died October 2016, some family threw him a funeral anyways. I felt like I was doing his memory a solid by not going. At an earlier stage in my life, when I was more self important -- I would have been livid at the family who threw a funeral for someone who didn't want one in life. Now I know stuff like that just doesn't matter.
The pain of losing a loved one has changed from an acute stabbing sensation in my kidneys to somber waves that roll over me, then recede. Getting better at coping with the deaths of those you love helps you come to terms with your own mortality.
Basically, don't worry about it.
Dig the grave and let me lie:
And I laid me down with a will.
If I ever fall feet first into a wood-chipper, I'll probably panic and try to find a way out. The instinct to survive is still there. The existential dread is just gone.
When you get a certain age, you know you will be dead in the time it took you to be born and graduate from college. Your window is rapidly closing. What are you going to do with the last 20-40 years? You might not be able to do much because you are stuck working, making someone else rich. You may very well be bound to that job because of health care costs.
When you are young, you may realize this will eventually happen, but you won't really understand it until you are in that situation. It's some heavy shit. People thinking about this sort of thing is probably why humans invented religion and spirituality.
When we're young, we're preoccupied with if something is right, or wrong - but there is a third answer to this question; "it doesn't matter"
Mark Twain said, “Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born — a hundred million years — and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.”
I think it comes pretty naturally. At some point you realize that your body has seen its best days and goes downhill. I used to do a lot of sport and it took me a while in my 40s to get used to the thought that I simply can't do things anymore like in my 20s. Now I try to maintain what I have but I know I can only slow down the decline. And this is OK.
if you're scared of death (and honestly i can't say that i ever have been to the point where i couldn't think deeply about it) just think of things in this objectively correct way: you've already been dead for the majority of the history of the universe, and it really wasn't so bad.
tell me, what was your life like in the year 14?
you have no recollection of it, obviously. it was oblivion; the idea of you did not even exist yet. you felt nothing. it's exactly the same situation as your life in the year 2952.
you already know how it feels. it is, in fact, the sensation that you have "experienced" infinitely more than any other. life tricks us into thinking that its sensations are the only thing, and it's nice to play along. but eventually you'll return to the peace of the familiar.
PS: while i haven't had the chance to dabble, i hear that many people find taking magic mushrooms and experiencing ego death is a good way to shed your fear.
When you die, there is nothing afterwards. We keep picturing this dark void, or ourselves floating in outer space, watching longingly as the world keeps going without us. We wonder what people will think of us. We wonder if it was worth it. We worry if we'll feel regret.
None of that happens--at least for some people. You can think of it like you just go to sleep, but no dreams. Just pure nothingness, and no sense of time, not sense of anything. You can imbdue this moment with terror if you want, but you can just as easily think of it as peace, final, eternal, lasting peace. Release from the struggle of book reports, bills, shouting matches, the constant biological drives, unsatisfactory lunch meat, the whole mofo.
Now, you can build it up to whatever you want. You can just as easily build it up to a moment of eternal terror when you regret the entire past and the lack of a future, and live forever in your worst moments being amplified and stretched to fill the universe.
There's actually no way of knowing which it is. But you get to choose how you think about it during your life. A life filled with dread and fear of this last moment is going to be sour, whereas a life filled with a slightly curious trust that everything will be fine will be much more enjoyable.
Death is such an intrinsic part of life that it makes no sense that it'd be a horror. It'd be a cosmic joke on all of us if it were. Knowing one person that has died well--old, without regrets, satisfied with loved ones, and not in pain is an existence proof that it doesn't have to be this way.
Personally I want to try to live one of those lives that ends in peace and without regretting or hating at the end, just a lot of nice memories coming back as my brain winds down and releases one monster rush of endorphins.
I don't really fear death. I'd rather my death not be painful, but I'll take what comes. It's part of the experience of living.
As for what exists once the body is gone ... one planet at a time!
This won’t be a popular view here, but lately I’ve begun to think that consciousness isn’t the kind of thing that can end. I used to think death was just inconceivable, but now I wonder if it’s fundamentally incoherent. I think one could make a phenomenological argument for the immortality of the pure self/ego (Husserl said some interesting things about this), but I won’t get into that here.
Either way, don’t worry about things you will never experience. :)
If to "be" is to be conscious, then you can't "be" unconscious.
You won’t experience what happens after you die, but you will certainly experience the process of dying.
Being dead doesn’t scare me. But the concept of the process of dying scares the crap out of me.
Deyr fé, deyja frændur, deyr sjálfur ið sama; en orðstír deyr aldregi hveim er sér góðan getur."
Cattle die, kinsmen die you yourself die; One thing now that never dies the fame of a dead man’s deeds.
Eventually you get used to the thought and it stops being scary.
Being busy helps, so you don't have time to think about it.
And have faith that (natural) death is a slippery slope --as you age you'll lose the mental faculties to fear death, and you're physical pain will increase until you welcome death or morphine. Since you won't fear it then, there's no need to fear it now. Just go enjoy.
One of my childhood heroes was Plutarch's Timoleon, a famous Corinthian general who decisively defeated the Carthaginians in Sicily in 339 BC and freed the Greek cities of that region from their tyrants. [0] He was over 70 when he did so. By Plutarch's account at least he accomplished little of note before embarking on the campaign in Sicily but at that point turned out to be an outstanding strategist as well as politician.
We live a long time. I have 12 years to go before reaching 70 and still hope to live up to Timoleon's example.
My point is, this woman has touched a lot of people's lives within her 'old' age. She helped my family out a lot at one point. She's spent decades volunteering. She's been there for a lot of people and IMO helped to make the world a slightly better place in her own way.
It's never too late.
You probably have more talent and money than any previous time in your life, yet you're ready to watch the sun set and don't have any reason to dream and your drive is gone?
Is there not a dozen things on your "bucket list" that still need checked off?
Sounds like you're more comfortable then you've ever been, but does your comfort translate into true happiness?
We're programmed by modern society to be consumers and not producers. Surely there is more happiness in waking up each day and working toward fulfilling your dreams?
I study a lot and perform well at work, but nowadays I would absolutely say it's not from ambition. Instead, it's from me enjoying to play that character in the game of life.
If modern society taught us a fallacy, it is to consider being content as something bad when, in fact, I can think of no better goal to die, and live, happy. Taking the road via accomplishments to get there is not necessarily the most likely way to get there.
Yes, and I think there's a lot of value in naiveté especially when pursuing immensely challenging opportunities. I just don't see how you can get out of bed otherwise because most important things are really hard to do.
I am curious as to what it is that you consider so important (and really hard to do)? Most things I see people rushing to do, are not actually important. Perhaps they are important to that person in particular, but such an importance is manufactured and should, if anything, be avoided.
I get out of bed mostly because there are fun and interesting activities available that are more entertaining than lying in bed. I'm not anywhere near anything that's actually important.
Also, another way to look at it is to empathise with other people's daily challenges and use your skills to come up with a solution that makes their lives easier and at the same time makes you richer because you take a little compensation from a whole lot of people.
Edit:
> I'm not anywhere near anything that's actually important.
If you're getting paid, you're likely doing something important. People do tend to like to hold on to their money.
> If you're getting paid, you're likely doing something important. People do tend to like to hold on to their money.
No, just no. You are committing the error of putting too much faith in the ability of the economic system to capture value. The economic system does not capture value well. All it does is measure scarcity vs desire.
Online casino developers are basically doing harmful work and can be paid quite well.
Social workers, paramedics, etc., and other groups of people doing legitimately important work are paid little, and mothers are paid none.
According to the current economic system of value, oxygen is worthless, as well.
I thought this was honestly obvious and I'm alarmed at your implication that the system's conception of value can be at all used to measure importance. The system surely measures something, but it isn't that.
I don't mean to discourage you from your own goals, but it's worth considering that as people age, they tend to see glory and distancing themselves from others through social status as less important in comparison to maintaining a social network and a family and even simply enjoying what you already have.
Being happy from fulfilling your dreams only works if your dreams are fulfillable. If they're not, you might very well end up rather unhappy. Happiness in this sense often comes down to a balance between legitimately required things, and managing expectations. Ambition, or large dreams, hardly seem required for happiness, and I'm inclined to say are actually detrimental to it.
Happiness and success should really be kept separate, and both be ends to themselves. A given person deserves their happiness, and useful projects should be completed because they're useful. Deriving happiness from completing a project means you have now made the project all about you, and from here comes corruption, such as continuing a project that has lost its usefulness, taking advantage of other people, or manipulating p-values.
I would consider 50 to be probably the most productive period of time in someone's life. They finally have enough experience and knowledge to do some pretty amazing things.
Doctors, artist, musicians, programmers? are just getting onto the highway of what's possible in life.
I should hope your brain has this sense of urgency that "you've made it" and now is your time to REALLY do something cool with your life because you've managed to do so much already.
Cheers
Life is mostly random; you don't get to control as much of it as your analytical brain might like to believe.
Your project will probably fail, because most projects fail, so if you are deferring present happiness in order to invest in the hope of future success, you are probably going to be less happy overall. Success feels good, to be sure - but then what? Another project, which will probably fail. So I think it's important to find a way to live a happy life whether you are trying to accomplish anything or not, and then the occasional success can be a bonus when it happens.
Every day I wake up and feel like I'm just getting started on most things.
I'm enjoying coding as much as I always have. I want to build a succesfull business just like I always have. I pretty much feel exactly the same as I did wen I was in my 30s.
I guess the one difference is a large part of my ambitions these days is about helping other people, when I was younger it was all about me.
I always found that inspirational. That at that age he still had the ambition and energy to do that.
At the very least it stands as evidence that you can still work productively or change your life at any age if you want to.
Colonel Sanders franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken for the first time when he was 62 expanded the company enormously over the following twelve years and and after selling it worked for it another 16 years.
> Stevens was financially independent as an insurance executive earning by the mid-1930s "$20,000 a year, equivalent to about $350,000 today (2016).
> By late February of 1947 with Stevens approaching 67 years of age, it became apparent that Stevens had completed the most productive ten years of his life in writing poetry.
As a young person you probably still have to find out who you really are and you tend to see time to live as an unlimited resource.
I would like to respectfully disagree. While I am not "old", I'm on my way. I am actually super on-board with simply removing a desire to achieve, and it has made me much happier. But I'm achieving all sorts of things anyways.
The second part of this is the assertion that options to change decrease with age. I have found exactly the opposite. As I gain more experience, build a solid chest towards an exceptionally early financial independence, and go out to find more like-minded but different people I tend to feel like options to change and expand my life start exploding in a way that requires picking and choosing more and more carefully between different things.
What do you think about the reduction of "ambition" as a helpful thing being replaced with a calm but strong "passion" as a potentially more positive alternative?
Is there really a right or wrong path to take? I thought one thing that happens as you get older is you realize there was never a right or wrong path to be taken. But, what do I know, I'm still young.
I had the opportunity to spend a couple of months off between jobs a few years back and I’ve never been happier. It was gone within a day of starting my new job. I like what I do for a living, but not nearly as much as I like freedom. Spending most of your life in dayprison sucks the joy out of your life.
More seriously, I once read a suggestion to have a performance partner who you chat with weekly, exchange goals, hold each other accountable, share ideas, etc. Someone who is not necessarily a close friend, but more of a business acquaintance. Anyone ever tried this?
What I saw a lot of people including myself struggle with though is how to set reasonable goals and stay focused. I saw a lot of people switch from project to project when they had a setback or due to shiny object syndrome. So I think accountability is also great for helping you focus and recognize when you're not staying on task.
Something that has helped me a lot is focusing on 3 projects at a time MAX in differing priorities and not starting anything new until I compete projects and make space. It's given me a mindset change of "will I be able to do this" to "I can't do anything until I get this done so let's get this shit out of the way."
It's not really that I need people to care about my things, more like I value a lot more sharing/helping people. And tech/science very rarely do so directly. Maybe it's an age thing. At one point you don't want to satisfy your ego, but take care of others (while earning a living).
Also, I have enough parts and ideas to have 10 companies. But as you say, to be fulfilling it would require partners in venture.
I quit my job and lived frugally on savings for 2 years. Loved every minute of it and if not for needing money/healthcare, I’d never work again.
Just watching tv, reading, exercising, sitting around.
I’ve spent longer periods of time doing fuck all earlier in life (college) and it was awesome. I could just hang around the house for the rest of my life and not get bored one bit.
> Humans are social creatures
While that may be true for the majority of people, it doesn’t apply to me. Being around humans makes me miserable. I like the idea of socializing, I see people having fun at social activities and that makes me want to spend time around people. But every time I do it’s just soooo boring. All I can think of is how I’d rather be at home, alone.
First thing I realized was that I really had no idea what I was doing- so I found mentors by going to conferences related to my work. It was amazing, meeting hundreds of people like me, passionate about building their busineses. I also found people who were going through the same thing in startup networks, mine was an incubator I graduated from.
Find people who do what you do, who are better than you, inspire you, and who will lift you up! It is night and day when you have a support network as an entrepreneur.
I had a severance package, savings, and unemployment. So I went 5 months without a job and it was amazing. Never in my adult life have I had so much energy than during that time.
That really got me into FI/RE (financial independence / early retirement) and I've seen been working towards early retirement since.
A few years ago I quit my Software Engineering job to drive from Alaska to Argentina, absolutely loved every minute.
After a few more years of work behind a desk to save money, I have again quit and I'm now driving around Africa. It's already been over 18 months, probably something like 12 to go. [1]
It's so freeing and rewarding to do exactly what I want each and every day. Freedom is so much more important than money for me.
I feel so passionately about doing this with my life and teaching others how I did it that I wrote an eBook on how I do it, called "Work Less to Live Your Dreams" [2]
First, the study it cites is at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3332527/. The study has a few problems insofar as the way the article wants to use it. The study covered several hundred individuals ranging in age from 18 to 94; the median age of the participants was about 55, but the study doesn't specify how many people were aged 80 or older; the study self-selected for people "who reported that their health was 'as good or better than most people their age'"; and, the trend analysis in the study displays a negative slope after age 70 for "positive emotional experience".
So, as long as you limit your sample to people aged 50 to 70 who are in better than average health, sure, maybe you can write an article that older people are happier. Also, make sure you use pictures of people much older than 70, and talk about a handful of individuals you used as case studies.
Missing from the author's case studies is my grandfather, turning 90 soon, who in his younger years was always very physically active and healthy, who was well-read as an orphan and supported the civil rights movement long before there was even a movement, who raised three daughters and lived long enough to see two of them die and the third fall to a painkiller addiction, who was married to and loved the same woman for almost 60 years before losing her, too. He spends his days and his nights in a recliner. Most of his mind still works but his body has mostly failed him. He can't go for a walk or enjoy the sunshine. He relies on phone calls and visits from his grandkids to break up the miserable monotony of his remaining days. He talks longingly and sincerely of "the Oregon needle", and is disappointed every time he recovers from a bout of pneumonia.
One of the things I've learned from him is that dying is okay. Just try to live really well first.
*edit - I'm guessing assisted suicide
I think he'd also say there's no recovering from the grief of losing his wife of 60 years. I can't even imagine being with someone that long, and at my age, likely will never have the opportunity to try.
I think more fundamentally -- and something that should be a part of more conversations about mortality -- he's outlived his ability to enjoy living.
One danger of articles like this one is that they can make old age seem not so bad (not that that was its intention, just a side effect). But, I've always had an affinity for older people, and I really don't think very many of them enjoy being elderly. It's a cruel way to spend our last years, if we're lucky enough to make it that far.
In the end, it's the experiences we had while young that we rely on to pass the days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKDXuCE7LeQ
This is good too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bktozJWbLQg
People tell me to get out and I do, tried surfing for example, didn't really appeal to me. Tried dancing, same. Did lots of traveling but it's not so fun alone for a 50 yr old guy.
I mostly feel now it's partly about luck as well. Meeting the right people, having the right support groups is invaluable. Pretty much everyone I meet that I might work with though is just looking for cheap labor as "I have this idea, you're an engineer, how about you do all the work for free and I'll take all the money if we make any" or at least that's how it feels.
As for as whether or not 52 is old sure it's not as old as 70 or 90 but ... society in general labels me as old. Various forms require an age listed and 45+ or 50+ is the last group. HN tells me I'd have trouble being hired. Not yet my experience but certainly on my mind. Going to almost any bar, club, meetup, hackathon and I'm the oldest one there.
I don't feel I've lost my ambition. If I had then maybe I'd be content. Rather I just lost direction and belonging.
I think we've destroyed lots of the support structures that at other times would have helped. So yes, first of all - it's not necessarily just you, the environment is involved too.
I think there's a wise route out, and people do get there. I don't know what it is. Some things that might help in case you haven't tried:
1. Psycotherapy. Even if you don't have clinical depression, this can still be valuable. Look for a practice (better than a single person as they're vetted, can find the best person for you, and mentor each other) and words like "integrative therapy" and "transactional analysis". It can be expensive. I've a friend who goes for a few months every two years even if mentally well, as it helps. Like a very emotionally aware life coach.
2. Life changes. Things like meditation are so popular to almost be a cliche, but I think they can help. If you're more philosophical maybe things like https://meaningness.com/ will inspire more than more hippy materials. Getting just a bit healthier, sounder sleep, improved diet but do so in a simple way by following someone non-obsessive, non-fadish - I recommend podcast and books by https://drchatterjee.com/
Good luck! You're not alone.
All I can suggest is that you look at how you can help some people or causes you care about - I don't know what those would be... sick kids, kids in distress, animals, old people, culture, education, the environment, but something that matters to you. Perhaps this won't work, but at the worst I can't imagine it would be any less than neutral.
"I felt trapped, waiting for the descent, wondering how steep, prepared somewhat for its arrival because it had never not come. Now, though, here was a PhD telling me the altruistic acts Buy Nothing Bainbridge enabled me to perform spurred production of chemicals that actually helped heal my misfiring synapses."
Sometimes science and religion do converge around the same truth. Some form of meaningful (to the recipient) giving is one path that would restore the "lost direction and belonging" mentioned in the top parent.
[1] https://buynothingproject.org/2013/12/23/my-buy-nothing-expe...
I also very very very often look a children. I know it's probably near impossible to recapture a virgin mind and its fresh experience of everything. But there's a musicality, in a physics lingo, a superb low impedance to their behavior. They just flow. And it speaks to me. After long periods of getting stuck in loops of browse/todolist/procrastinate. I find the idea of catching my own desires, no matter what, and just get moving; often by starting the motion, energy and happiness make a blip on the radar.
I've been insanely fortunate to have things align for me such that I was able to recruit my 93-year-old grandpa to be my unofficial happiness mentor about 18 months ago. What started as just errands morphed into going on adventures and a constant stream of wisdom. I've been on what feels like an unusual journey (not many of my friends hang out with a 90+ year-old every couple weeks). Leland's book has been helpful in understanding how special it's been. I wrote a longer piece about my journey with my grandpa this week. https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook
My kid keep me young, keep me learning. I used to coach high school hockey, that was a blast.
Want to be happy? Don't get old. Want to not get old? Hang with kids.
There was some interview with a tailor in HK I think, he was pushing 100 and still working. He credited kids, he said they kept him young and interested.
Does this confuse anyone? What old person is told by others when to awake, what to wear, what to say, who to talk to, when to get through the metal detector, how to act in front of the pervasive cameras in every hallway and every room, watched over like a hawk for any infraction, kept away from friends and where every joke is taken out of context in the most negative interpretation possible and used to persecute and judge them, always with the expectation that a criminal and malign intent is at heart?
Here's a little experiment. Take any article about adolescents, teenagers, young adults, millenials, etc... and pretend they were saying those things about a race. Or gender. Just replace the age category with one you're not comfortable being bigoted over. See how the claims stack up and how familiar they sound. The young are a persecuted minority group. Who would expect them to be content?
Overall I like the article though it was a bit predictable. Taoism by a different name, but yes, it works. In a storm, the stiff branch breaks while the supple, flexible one survives. A stream flows around and through anything placed in its path but can wear away mountains. Each day, you must find enough food to eat and water to drink to stay alive. You need shelter from dangerous weather (depending on your location). Everything else is gravy. Everything.
When you're young, no one cares about what you think, or what you have to say, when you're old, no one is paying attention anymore.
(If you are unfamiliar with Stoicism and would like to learn more, the blog archive at http://modernstoicism.com/ has a lot of content. I also liked William Irvine's "A guide to the good life" (https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/0195...).
What I got from the piece was: if you want to be happy, have a caring circle of friends, family who visit you once a week, a supportive lover, and impactful projects your are passionate about. These folks live quite excellent lives (health issues notwithstanding) compared to anyone of any age. Age has certainly given them more perspective, but I think it’s secondary here.
How can a miserably depressed closed system find a solution without exploring outside of themselves?
Thinking outside of yourself and trying to be happy are things that you have to realize for yourself and self help stories like these don't do much in the grand scheme of things. I just practice mindful meditation or do something relaxing. I think its sick making people believe in some kind of false hope that you get from these self help phonies.
Despite years of chronic fatigue (hence my username) I decided to start a manufacturing business and go after all those dreams I had as a kid but never knew how to get to.
Reinvent yourself. It’s never too late. Some of your best years may lie ahead.
I'm doing my travelling and going to concerts while I'm young.
The quote from Jonas made me think to look for books written by old people. Is there a database where I can easily compare the publication date of a book and the date of birth/death of the author?
Surely the data must be available, because the date of the author's death is important for copyright issues.
You'll be depressed/unhappy when your environment doesn't foster creativity/self-actualization in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
I personally don't see the younger generation, without some large impact, able to step back from their need for immediate response, lack of attention to detail, etc.
Socrates.