Hacker News Reader

Comment by IndrekR | Hacker News Reader

> Except that the most interesting part of life is over

What makes life beyond 55 uninteresting?

Or may be what he means is that enjoying the experiences with the money in hand (leisure, travel) might not be as good as that in the youth, typically assuming health issues due to ageing.

Heart surgeries, joint replacements, kidney failure. Stuff like that. Good for you if you don't end up with those issues... But they are common for a reason. Take a look at your parents/uncle's/aunts and you will have an idea of what your 60s will be like. I'm watching my father and all his siblings have different issues in their 60s and I have suddenly realized that lifestyle can't beat genetics. I haven't quite figured out what to do with this new realization yet.

I think that depends on who you ask. People in their 20s still think people in their 50s are old.

In my world 50 isn't that old in this day and age. Most people I know at an age around 50 are healthy, active and enjoy life often even more then people in their 30s with young kids and everything else around that.

Professional (Fussell's Upper-Middle) class or higher? That's wildly different from the more Middle-and-under sorts of 50-year-olds I'm familiar with. That's the decade when they tend to start to look tired all the time (more so, I mean—that kind of "oh they're finally permanently broken" tired) and start having health issues & surgeries that seriously damage quality-of-life.

Life expectancy is somewhere roughly in the 70s-to-80s. So it's not entirely surprising that if you tell someone "statistically, I have as much remaining time to live as you've been alive" they're going to think you're old.

Now if you actually step back and move the early part of life where you can't do much you can see it's much closer to middle-age than it is to death.

Interesting. I could tell that to myself, but I don't feel old.

less interesting

Reply on news.ycombinator.com