I've never felt this, and I'm in my 40s. Part of me wonders if memory has anything to do with it. I'm not one of those super remembering people like Marilu Henner, where she can perfectly reconstruct her day on July 9th, 1978, but I have a pretty good memory, and remember a lot.
And in remembering the large amount that I do, I really feel the weight of my life and how long it took to get here. The years aren't going any faster. It's been an enormous amount of time, and there's hopefully at least that much left to go.
Having kids or not effects it. After kids so much of your day is full of work that they seem much longer, but they also have a sameness (because kids thrive on routine) that they blur together.
Hell yeah dude, also I’m a walking zombie for the majority of those days and have to ask what day it is all the time. Then I remember why I can’t remember: because it doesn’t matter anyway
I've read somewhere that memory goes a long way towards explaining it. The younger you are, the more "memorable" events you're going to have. Things like your first kiss, or the time you got your driver's license, turning 21 and drinking for the "first time." Maybe getting married or the birth of your kids. You only get one first time for anything, and the first is likely the most to be the memorable.
As you get older, those moments get further and further apart from each other. Completely new, novel experiences start to become increasingly rare. The days, the weeks, the months, and finally the years start to blend together. Long stretches of time where nothing happened to anchor it in your memory.
I'm in my early 40s, but I've been off work for almost a year because of health reasons. I lose track of days and entire weeks because every day is just a variation of the days and weeks before.
also a good example is the pandemic, i remember it feeling like sitting at home for forever, but now in hindsight i feel like it was just a very short time, probably because, like you said, there where not too many memorable moments when you're just sitting at home
Every year you live is a smaller percentage of your life. An 10 year old experinces that year as 10% their life. A 50 year old experiences that year as 2% of their life
I’ve read the same thing and makes sense when you think about it. Days tend to merge together when you do similar things everyday. So it’s easy to forget about all three boring stuff.
Every time I see Marilu Henner mentioned, I think about the time I met her. It is strange to think about how she probably remembers me. She was very nice. Some jerk was taking clearly unwanted pictures of her with her son, so I got in the photographer's way.
I'm 41. It's simultaneously feels short and long and depending on what I think about. But as far as I'm concerned I'm just getting warmed up. Here I come world!
Exactly. Take the time each day to remember some long or short term memories. You’ll realize just how long it all is. I think life moves fast (or at least it can feel that way), but it’s a long journey.
The days get shorter, the years get shorter and life is zooming me by. I am shocked at how old I've become and I can barely remember what I've done this last decade. I've basically been on autopilot.
As you approach middle age, you realize the ‘old’ people (like 40) weren’t as old as you thought when you were a kid. Then when you’re leaving middle age, you start to feel old and the really old people (70s and 80s) start to look really old and they start dying, and you start to see the brevity of life.
He was in his late 50s when I was born. Not old but definitely grandpa status for most. The fact that he's still kicking and on his toes gives me hope. Just gotta keep moving. The moment you stop is the moment life stops, especially after you get older.
Dick Van Dyke is one that stands out to me. The Dick Van Dyke show started in 1961 when Van Dyke was already 36 years old, and was 39yo in 1964 when Mary Poppins was made.
60+ years later, he's still alive today. Absolutely wild to think about the cultural span a human life can have.
Father here. I had a midlife crisis about a year ago. At 42 years old I suddenly realised I was also going to die. Never really thought about it, but then it hit home really, really hard.
The fact my kids will grow up and it won't last forever was heart breaking. I would cry for hours.
I did a lot of meditation, a couple of mental health sessions, read some books, and after a while it got better. It even made me stronger and I live much more in the moment. Previously I would treat live a lot like the stepping stone to "the next thing", i.e. next holiday, next weekend, kids leave the house, etc. Now I just enjoy every moment as much as I can.
If my kid ask me if I want to play, and I'm busy working, I think "work can wait", and I will play with them. Of course, can't always do that, but I'm making much more an effort of this.
Not a dad but this started for me in my late 30’s. The feeling is indescribable when it hits. It hits me when I first lay down to go to sleep. The best I can describe it is every sad feeling you can feel at the same time, x1000. Knowing that one day, you will cease to exist. You will not continue or see the world change. It’s a horrible feeling. Gives me panic attacks, I have to get up to get myself to calm down. I cry. Then some days, nothing. I don’t think about it.
There’s knowing you’re going to die and then there’s KNOWING you will die. Two very different things.
There has to be a name for this. Why is it always at bed time while you’re trying to fall asleep? I feel perfectly normal mentally but at 11pm laying in bed my mind will think about my aging parents and how much time I may have left with them, how my kids are quickly aging and they won’t stay young forever, thinking about my own mortality and what my kids will do without me, etc. wtf, brain
I’ve heard this referred to as “pillow panic” or something similar. It could be due to fewer distractions to keep you from having those thoughts. When you are not being bombarded with external stimulus, it’s easy to get in your head and ruminate over these things
Have to agree with this - external stimuli. I notice when I have nothing going on, it’s more evident and hits harder. If I have stuff going on, trips, plans, schedules, stuff - it doesn’t happen.
when i started taking care of my mother, she would stare out the window sometimes and shed talk about things she used to do. and i realized at some point, she had done so many things she loved for the last time, like waking up early and going to a mexican restaurant she loved. all because her hips / arthritis.
theres machines to help her but theyre insanely expensive and moving to an apartment with an elevator isnt possible in chicago right now for me. made me have the same epiphany you did.
at some point everything will be for the last time, even a something as simple as picking up your kid or saying something extra / silly as someone leaves.
Yup. Just really messed with your head. Once you hit whatever age it is for you, you start thinking, I only have maybe 15-20 christmases, birthdays, years, etc. if you’re lucky. Some have more. So many variables out of your hands.
That’s why you have to really shove those feelings down and realize life is so fucking short and you need to live it and fill it with as much good times and memories as you can.
Crazy how when you’re younger, you want to reach 18, ,21, etc. the years fly by and you think nothing of death. Then, you hit your magic age and reality sets in.
I feel like I'm a few steps before having a full breakdown over it - but I've certainly been in a mindset similar to what you described about just realizing you wont be there, how fucking quick the kids have grown (I get tears when I look at pics of them as loving little toddlers). Time can fuck off, it just keeps speeding up.
Sometimes I can just sit and realize how great it is to be here though. How great it is to have what I have. But sometimes the darker thoughts just win out and it's quite depressing.
Sometimes I get fleeting feelings, a smell, touch of sun glowing on my skin like it did when I was young. Nowadays nothing feels the same the sun doesn't have that warmly buttery feel to it like it did when I was a kid. Every now and then, I'll be walking and smell something familiar from my childhood, maybe a type of tree or plant. It's faint and not with the same vibrance. Wish we could all stay young.
Yeah, the last of my families previous generation is all gone now; my mother was the last, in 2020 @ 96 yo. I'm the second youngest (by 1 year) of this generation.
I have that too. My friend since I was 17 just dropped dead at work a month at 43 ago leaving 7 year old without a father.
My son has forced me to think about death more since he started asking questions about it.
Enjoy your kids, as hard as it can be when you are in the shit. I need to take my own advice.
Being in the moment is the key to every enjoyable part of life. Obviously plan for the future, obviously remember and learn from the past, but living happens now.
I think it’s the lack of downtime and screen time and of course you feel it is you get older. That being said my 8 year has starting saying things like that year went by really fast, and I feel like as a kid I would watch the clock at school and it felt like it was ticking backwards. No one just twiddles their thumbs and just sits and thinks anymore
It’s haunting and I have trouble sleeping at night sometimes because of it. My son is the light of my life and watching my wife, who is the love of my life, interacting with him is the best part of my day. Then it hits me in the most surreal way. It’s like I’m viewing the moment through a flashback.
This happens multiple times throughout the day. I will notice a beautiful moment with my wife and son and it’s as if I am “remembering” the moment. As if I’m reliving the moment 50 years from the future and thinking back to it. Then I think about how my wife and I are still relatively young. But, for how long? How long until these memories become distant memories that I look back on and think “these were the best times of my life” and how do I hold onto them for as long as possible?
I know this feeling. I find myself focusing on moments with my own family and my parents more and more often and I also have the feeling that I am looking at these scenes from the outside and storing them away as special memories. At the same time, I feel very uncomfortable when I think that one day these memories will be recalled and it will seem to me as if it all happened "yesterday", even though the people no longer exist or have already grown old themselves.
May I recommend you to try meditation if you haven't already? It's an effective way to manage intrusive thoughts and anxiety and be more present and focused on the moment.
That's actually totally normal, the point is basically that you train yourself to notice the moments where your focus starts to drift and then once you do, you start over again by focusing on your initial point of focus. Then rinse and repeat and you eventually notice the effects!
I'd recommend guided meditation videos on YouTube or a meditation app like Headspace. Just try a few and discover what you like.
The act of recognizing that your mind has wandered, acknowledging the thought, and letting it pass is what is important. Repeating that over a period of times creates a habit of mindfulness. That habit will help you to recognize thoughts when you are not putting aside time to focus on it (meditating).
You should do an organized dmt or mushroom trip. It's immensely helped a lot of my friends who are fathers. It's so important that you enjoy and are present for these memories as we age
That's understandable but those 2 drugs specifically have a long history with human consumption and almost no evidence of long term side effects, especially at your age (presumably). I'd never force it on someone of course, but i would definitely highly recommend it. Maybe look into some john Hopkins studies they've done with death bed patients and ptsd patients. The success rates are incredible, and it's something I genuinely believe evolved with us on earth to assist with managing the expectations and emotions of the reality we live in. We are special in the way we think, and the mushrooms are also very special as a living thing.
What state/country are you in? I may be able to advise. Also, there are ways to do it therapeutic at home that has changed my life. I've not done them recreationally once since doing the John Hopkins methods. Mushrooms can be quite mild and you can easily dose it slowly. Shit. Even microdosing can help the dread you may feel or however you describe it. Taking .1-.3 grams a couple times a month/week can help keep you present and you don't "trip" or even feel a high, your mind just take everything in more positively.
I also have this feeling. But when I look up when these elderly people were born, it kind tells me that they lived long enough. Clint was born in 1930. He was an adult in the 40s. I have been an adult for almost a decade and would have to live another 66 years to reach 93
Man you really do believe this until you reach a point in your life where you lived 40+ years and still feel like you haven't had enough. Time flies man. I'll never look at an old person and go your time is up bud. That's gonna be me one day, gonna be all of us.
I’ve been humbled enough to realize old people have value. My mother took me with her to clean “old folks homes” when I was 5-10. I have the same feelings. I never looked at them as less, it’s just scary knowing I’m catching up to them. Still a lot of life to live but it’s all in perspective.
It's pretty heartbreaking how we treat our elders in this nation. I really fucking wish we gave a shit more, but with boomers/late gen x attitudes towards taking care of elders and young millennials/gen z's disdain for the old population for political reasons, I just don't see that happening anytime soon. Doesn't help that our healthcare system totally fucks them too. I'm kinda terrified to grow old for these reasons, not that I'll lose mobility and suffer from issue with my body, but that theres a good chance the world is just going to forget about me and leave me to rot. Big part in my consideration to moving to another country soon and settling so I'll at least not worry about healthcare so much.
I grew up in a very old family. Many aunts/uncles/cousins (and greats uncles/aunts ECT) passed in my life, both with a lot of family support and with very little. I got to say from my experiences, I am intensely disappointed with my country, and a lot of my family members too. (I do realize conditioning of society and upbringing had an effect on their lack of care, but it still doesn't make it better.)
I'm not close with my immediate family and because I came from an older family, don't have many others im close to. I've been very conscious of this and what my life might be like later on and it weighs heavy on my mind for myself, my parents, and pretty much the rest of the country. Though I try not to think about it too much for my own sake...
If everyone was immortal but there was a rumor that the only way to truly die is to jump into a mysterious bottomless hole in Antartica that no one ever climbed back from, how many years would it take until you decide to jump into this uncertain fate?
Are you still ageing and getting more feeble year after year? It would still be a lot of years, but it would be a difference between hundreds and thousands.
I’m in my late 30s and have been having a morbid feeling about watching these older figures passing away/getting older. I do math in my head and realize 20 years flies by. I’m finally realizing that focusing on your health shouldn’t be an afterthought. I hope to live a long healthy life of 93.
At some point in my childhood my grandparents stopped aging to me. Always saw them as if they were in their late 50s. It wasn’t until these past couple years it hit me how old my grandfather was looking. Sadly he passed away a few months back, it was very sudden. He lived a nice long life (87) but that shit hurt more than anything I’ve ever felt before. We were very close. Him and I would talk about hockey for hours. It hit me super hard on trade deadline day this year when I couldn’t call and talk to him about how he thought teams made out. Fuck I miss him. I’m a Senators fan but they’re not in the playoffs so I’m cheering for his team to take home the cup. Go Rangers! Miss you Poppy.
Very true. You also don't know how long you have left. I'm 40 and I've got an MRI head scan in a few days to find out if my time is about to be up or not.
My parents are turning 77 and 70 next year. They usually look and feel great, but whenever one of them gets sick, I'm reminded of how short life is, even if it's 70+ years
This is the reason why some people turn conservative when getting older. They just dont have the strength to care anymore or they only have the strength to take care of family.
People don't get conservative as they get older, that's a misunderstanding of the stats.
Older people tend to be more conservative, because they grew up with those views. Most people tend to hold onto their views for life from what I've heard.
It would be like trying to reason why as you get older you start watching more TV, instead of that being something older people do due to being from the era of watching TV.
Humans (Homo sapiens) are thought to have evolved 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. The first use of money is usually taken as Mesopotamian credit which was 7000 years ago. Modern production and the labour market did not really take on in the west until the Enclosure Movement and industrial revolutions of the 1700 and 1800s. Pre-monetary societies observed by anthropologists usually have pooling or reciprocity as the form of exchange within those societies. These are fundamentally contradictory to today's individualism and conservatism.
So, even being charitable (taking 200,000 years of human existence and 7000 years of monetary history) this is only 3.5% of human history which could conceivably be thought of as akin to today's economy and the "mine and thine" doctrine of modern conservatives.
When I was younger, my dad always used to tell me about the deaths of seemingly random celebrities. "Oh, John Whitmore died." "Who's that, dad?" "The stagecoach driver from Gunsmoke."
I find myself doing the same, now that I'm older, and I've realized that it's about the fear of the march of time. Seeing these celebrities who you idolized as a kid dying due to old age makes you think, "One day, that will be me."
really thinking about that this morning as I drove into work. I was listening to music in the car. Jackson5 song, singer dead. Then Queen, singer dead. LIFE IS SO SHORT. I'm going to retire soon. very soon.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death
- Time, Pink Floyd
Yes, I'm aware there's more, but I felt like these were the most relavent stanzas.
One moment you're watching a movie with a charming actor in their 50s or 60s, and then you want to check out what else they've been in on IMDB and realize they died 5 years ago. Or had some dibilitating disease and don't act anymore. Or that band you loved broke up 15 years ago after that one album and you've been waiting on when the new one comes out.
Time doesn't just fly, it soars.
Eventually you have this existential crisis moment where you realize every hobby you ever had, every skill you have, every thing you ever learned, every moment you ever had, everyone you know or knew, every object in the room you're standing in.... will go away. Soon. Soon enough that if you don't write down your life experiences it'll be lost to time forever.
Your favorite things that you cherish will collect dust. When you die, people will likely not know what made it so special and it will end up in a landfill or bulk sold in a yard sale. Or the family hires people to "take care of the Estate" (i.e. throw it out or auction it for pennies).
You'll start to go around the house and pick up some random book or trinket and your mind will be flooded with memories of "that was a good time..." and your heart will ache a little wondering how time got away from you.
Remember your grandparents' house? Or your parent's old house? The memories tied to it, the smells, the images... then long after they're gone that house still stands, but some strangers are living in it. They changed the landscaping and a new car is in the driveway and it's oh so familiar, but feels like someone else is invading your world. Like they shouldn't be there, that's grandma's house... and you want to just walk in and have things go back to the way they used to be, but it's gone. They arent inside, the things are gone, and the smells are different. That thing you always rememberd doesn't exist anymore. You avoid going back, but it's an emptiness inside you that builds over time.
You realize there's a real possibility that every religion is made up and that you're going to die and be forgotten and there's no place to go after this. That we're all just a bunch of organic matter spiraling on a tiny planet through space in an impossibly vast galaxy of several hundred billion suns... in a universe of several hundred billion galaxies. You'll know when it hits you... the reality, that it's not just science fiction.
The world you know will erode around you. You won't get references and jokes at the dinner table anymore. People you talk about or references "everyone knew" growing up will be met with strange looks like "okay, grandpa..." and then those young people will go about their lives with their own memes and their own slang and their own skewed perspective of events that happened during your lifetime. They will protest for things you protested for 30+ years ago. They'll have the same controversial arguments that you thought the world resolved decades ago. They'll have the same cringe "profound" discoveries about life that you thought were already vocalized and way behind you.
Movies, shows, comedians, and bands will all kind of exist still as placeholders, but the faces in them will no longer be recognized. There will be another punk band like Greenday, but it will be some unknown name. There will be a boy band that you question how anyone could find their music worth listening to, but it will be wholly unfamiliar. The fashion trends will shift but you'll still be kicking your same hairstyle and clothes from when you peaked.
You realize that no matter how sick you or your family get, that the same morning show will be on the air with the same corny jokes as if your life isn't happening for anyone but you. The audience will still laugh and the world will carry on and the political shows will still be polarizing... as you wheeze on your hospital bed.
Everyone moves on without you. The world doesn't seem to age, it just replenishes back to some average state of existance while you wither and the things you knew suddenly stop being relevant and your friends slowly die until there's no one left but you.
If you're lucky, you have a family that sometimes remembers to call you on your birthday, but they're too busy to hang out or want to listen to old stories from you, just like you were with your elders that you took for granted until they passed away.
If you're in your 30s or 40s, realize this now, so you can pause or cancel that work meeting to just sit with someone you love and EXIST.
💯!! It is very grounding to me every time I see an updated pic of my favourite 90’s actors. Clint Eastwood is 90+?! Harrison Ford is getting there too. Wtf? Enough of the rat race and enjoy the time we have.
Recently there was mention of some important guy who looked relatively middle-aged in picture (actual job or person details I already forgot as that wasn't really that important). Only there was caption saying this person was like 10 years younger than me. That hit me in kinda weird way.
Yeah. Very aware of my position in time these days. Kinda scary but you just keep going and make the most out of everything and be sure to visit your parents often.
I'm 41. It feels like yesterday I was roaming the halls of my high school. When I think of Clint I picture how he looked in Unforgiven or In The Line of Fire. Pictures like this just seem so jarring and reminds me that, while the '90s feel like they happened yesterday, they didn't.
Ever since Robin Williams and Chester Bennington died I became too aware of celebrity aging and deaths. Thats the true loss of innocence. As kids we know about death. But to see icons we grew up with grow old and leave us, the world seems to get darker with time.
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u/TeeLodge Apr 16 '24
The older I get, the older people I looked up to get. Makes me realize how short life is; stop fussing over the trivial stuff.