Dear Young Folk,
Physical aging happens ridiculously fast. Faster than you imagine. The years just tick away like minutes.
Mental aging goes much slower (barring dementia or other malidies, of course).
The crazy thing is that even once older (I'll turn 60 this year) your view of yourself quite often feels like you're still much younger.
I internally feel perpetually 30-35. Until I try to (say) run or sprint, or jump off something, then... oh my. I really am 60. Another example: my brain knows how to throw a fast ball (ingrained from when I was a teenager). If I actually try... uhh.. no go. My arm revolts.
I've even asked my 83 year old mom how her internal self feels. She says the same - still feels like she did in her 30s on the inside. On the outside she has to intentionally walk very carefully so as not to fall and break something.
Moral of the story? Enjoy that young body while you have it. Seriously. It won't last.
I'm 38 and right around 34-35 is when you start to notice it IMO. I have minor scoliosis in two places and I threw out my back getting out of bed one morning when I was like 34.
I'm 37 and about 6 months ago I woke up and my back and shoulder hurt like hell.
It got better when I moved around but it hurt a lot if I didn't move my arm for a few minutes.
I tried median nerve flossing like in this video and it gradually got better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQWy_M9Lso
43 here. Still feel strong thanks to the gym. I've been lifting since I was 17. Longest I've ever stopped was about 2 years. I still lift heavy and don't have any of that "older folks" back pain, and "it's really hard to get up in the morning" and all that. I'm thankful for that. It's never too late (if you don't have a condition that prevents you) to become a gym goer.
I'm 57 and I bike 25 or 50 miles four days out of every five, and I work out at the gym every day. I had stretches when I was a decade or two younger where I did nothing but eat and smoke pot and I weighed forty to fifty pounds more than I do now; during those stretches I felt like I was 80 and hurt all over all the time. Sometimes older folks have severe injuries that prevent them from doing anything physical and the decay just adds up, but for a lot of people being sedentary creates the illusion that aging is unstoppable. Of course it is unstoppable ultimately, but you can sure as fuck do a lot to slow it down.
Good for you and thank you for sharing. My dad always told me "I'd rather die walking". Dude is right. He's in his mid 70s and is still pulling like he's 20 years younger. I want to be that guy. Not guaranteed of course, but it's my goal.
I'd rather die running, but I recently had to quit because of arthritis in my knee. So I guess I'll just have to die biking.
Do yoga, that's what I started doing after the back issue mentioned above and it has definitely helped.
My hair-thinning had gotten really bad, plus a wealth of other health issues. It was only when I realized that I had been taking high-dosed tranquilizers every day, starting in the morning, that I could admit to myself that I had a stress problem. On top of my objectively ridiculous workload, I started interviewing, and it took a long, very painful year to find a new job that was better in every way. And wouldn't you know, within a year, my hair grew back so thick that I could hardly run a comb through it even when it was short and wet. It took a few more years for most of my other, stress-related issues to abate, though.
And to counteract some of the negativity in this thread, some people positively don't seem to age, especially those regularly working out. I've known men and women that looked exactly the same over 20, even 30 years.
TLDR: Work out for fun, and don't ever get salaried.
Salary is fine. Just don't ever work more hours than they pay you for. Lack of manpower is your manager's problem, not your golden opportunity to subsidize the company payroll budget at the cost of your health and sanity.
I'm 43 and the thinning hair the only real indication so far. I stretch, and lift weights so that I can stay fit enough to surf, and I ride my Ebike everywhere that I can. As long as you stay active, you don't really feel it till your 70s or 80s. Eat your veggies kids. You can't outrun your diet.
I have had constant physical pain since my 20s, and had to to accept being bald before I turned 30.
Speed running life, basically.
I'm only in my 30s, but it was quite a wake up call, when I noticed my body simply started "failing" in small ways. Knee injury wasn't just a week of "taking it slow", but months, and it's still not really good. If you go to the doctor, you'll suddenly get diagnoses like "yeah, that's how it'll stay now".
The really disturbing thing though is seeing your friends age. That dude who got all the girls in school now has more trenches on his face than Verdun, the super good looking girl now is a woman and becomes a pudgier each year, hair gets gray, skin gets loose. You don't notice that on yourself so much.
And on a social note: the world is shrinking. Those kitchen parties with 30 people you barely know, but met a bunch of new friends are gone. Most of the people you knew in school or university are gone. You try to keep in touch, but that's hard after years of separation. Those who are still close have barely any time left and just hanging out for no reason this evening is no more.
Having a full time job, family and friends simply doesn't work. And that sucks.
Are you saying I should try to make the most of Uni life? (Or potentially get myself one if I'm locked at home)
You don't really have to do anything special to make the most of life. Different people like different things; and whatever you choose to do is likely to be valuable to you. Just be mindful that that you don't sleep-walk through it all. Make the most of it by being conscious of it.
I was trying to explain this to my kids - about the mental aging part. Mentally, I don't feel any different than I did 25 years ago. I don't even know what mentally aging would feel like, other than dementia or something like you mentioned.
I was blessed with a strong body. Even as I age my reflexes are still there. My whole body coordination still exists. I am still strong, physically adaptable, and can lose weight easily. Any physical activity is not yet out of reach I've found. However...
My metabolism has slowed.
Injuries heal slower.
I have some pains I didn't have before.
I do get tired more easily.
It catches us all in different ways. I've been luckier than most in some aspects, feel it I still do and it'll only get worse.
The older you get, the harder it becomes to find time with your friends. Go out and do active things with them, go camping, spend all night driving around or playing pool and talking about life. That stuff will fade way before your physical fitness.
not to shit on you or anything, but I think this is also probably a result of modern sedentary lifestyle. (I am currently in my mid thirties and feel physically broken). just a PSA to everyone—continue to just do physical activity so you can physically perform activities.
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Mid-thirties here, 6 months ago I started taking my diet seriously and 3 months ago I started with regular exercise and weight lifting. I've lost over 30kg, back to a healthy weight, and starting to see muscle definition. More importantly than the visual changes, I feel a lot better, better than I did at pretty much any age. I wish I started sooner with this but I'm confident if I keep it up it will have a major, major impact on my quality of life as I grow older.
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he's over 60 now, isn't he? like, what the fuck do you want?
also i think he looks better on the right.
I think part of the cognitive disconnect of when you see an actor age is that so much of their life is recorded and so much of our mental concept of them is locked in to the video that we have seen of them.
Then suddenly when you encounter them having aged normally it looks really weird.
And then you have people like Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Kate Beckinsale who look like they haven't aged a day in decades. It's hard to believe that Brad is like 61 and still looks about 35.
I follow Kate on Instagram (highly recommended) and she's over 50 (IIRC) and still looks like she's in her late 20s. I'm convinced that she's actually a vampire and Underworld was an autobiography.
If you have a job that pays you a vast fortune and it's primary requirement is that you look super hot you'd probably invest a little of that money into eating and exercising well too.
Not only that but there are billions of dollars spent every year in enhancing our youthful appearances. There are all matter of artificial peptides and hormones and substrate injections and buccal fat pad revisions and microneedling and threading and Botox available if remaining youthful looking is that important to you.
All of this works in addition to healthy eating and healthy exercising and some of the most miraculous powers of makeup and instantly generated artificial intelligence overlays to help ensure that people remain as youthful looking as it is financially profitable and personally possible for them to do so.
And then you have people like Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Kate Beckinsale who look like they haven't aged a day in decades. It's hard to believe that Brad is like 61 and still looks about 35.
Flashback to an early episode of Last Week Tonight where a thoroughly embarrassed John Oliver points out that he's 5 years YOUNGER than Rock "The Dwayne" Johnson 😄
Nah, brad pitt absolutely does not look like he is 35. He may look very good for his age, but not that good.
Your perception of what a 35 year old should look like may have changed as you also aged though.
I'm 38, so I know what 35 looks like haha People age at different rates than others. I've seen 35 year olds that look like their 65 and 65 year olds that look like their 35.
You notice how everybody has that one famous person that people tell them they look like? Lately I've been getting Michael Douglas. Michael Douglas is almost 80. I'm in my 40's. People just picture Michael Douglas in his 40's because that was the height of his career.
Have you ever seen his first movie? It was a cheesy horror/comedy called Once Bitten and it is terrible but still really fun to watch lol
Heh, the response is exactly what I thought of as a response before scrolling down further to see that some motherfucker out there went and stole my thoughts from the future just so they could put it online.
What a vulgar display of power.
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Readers added context they thought people might want to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Display_of_Power
Honestly will all the crazy shit he does with his face I'm Suprised there's not twice as many wrinkles. This is probably him toxin'
Doesn't it? That's where the wrinkles on your knuckles come from. Your skin forms wrinkles where it creases often.
Yes. Like people who always make pouty lips when they smoke get wrinkles around their mouth very quickly aka smoker’s lines. It’s from repeated motion. Those wrinkles non-smokers get much later in life. I know thirty year old smokers who start to get those lines already.
I think there are also differences in the camera setup that makes his face seem slimmer or wider respectively.
I am no photographer but I've played around with focal length, zoom and distance before.
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Yeah it all ultimately depends on the ratio of the distances to different parts of the subject.
Take a headshot from a foot away, and his ears might be 1.5x that distance away. Take it from ten feet away, and now his ears are 1.05x the distance. That makes their size similarly shaped too. Sometimes called compression, as in compressing the foreground and background together.