Episode 21: Getting Old

[00:00:00] Seth: When I turned 30, I suddenly became aware of my mortality for the first time. I had finished school, I had a job, I had a family, and I had no clear coming of age milestones ahead of me. And I hit 30. I finally hit my third I guess my fourth decade. Up until that point, I was generally pretty excited every year about getting older.

There's something about Just, you know, feeling more mature because when you're young, you recognize that nobody really looks at you the same as they do other adults. And for good reason, because you're immature. As you get older, you finally, you finally get to that point and you realize, Oh crap. My youth is You know, I've, I've hit my peak.

I've, I've hit my peak of development. I am now slowly going to decay. Which, I know that's a little bit of an extreme way of looking at it, but, that's kind of what happens. I mean, it takes forever. Well, it doesn't take forever. It takes, I don't know, 50 years or so, or maybe less, before we start really feeling the effects of our age.

But, I mean, elite athletes start feeling it in the middle of their 30s. And it's a disturbing thought to realize that you are no longer necessarily improving. And to the contrary, you're actually starting to experience very, very slow decline. So around that time I got really health conscious and I've since begun to dread every single birthday.

And this fear of old age really, really drove me to that. Which I suppose is a good thing. And You know, a good thing that I'm trying to be healthier. And I don't intend to stop that, but the downside to all of this is the time that I have wasted worrying about the passing of time. It seems like with time especially, the more concerned you let yourself get over how fast it passes, the faster it goes.

And all the while you spent it worrying. I don't think we should be ignorant to the future, but I do think we need to be grateful for the present. This is a problem I've been trying to solve for a little while now, because I know that this is not something I should be thinking about. It's something that doesn't deserve very much attention, but so far as I can see, the best way to, to approach age is really it's perspective.

You know, to somebody in their forties, I'm in my thirties, I'm so fortunate. I'm in my thirties. I potentially have most of my life ahead of me, and to somebody in their 60s, the person that's in their 40s has absolutely nothing to complain about. Because they're still likely relatively healthy, and haven't aged that much.

But to somebody that's in the process of dying, we all have it good regardless of our age because we still have our health. So I may no longer have any coming of age milestones ahead of me, but that doesn't mean that I can't still accomplish things in my life and create my own milestones. I also still have my health, and I'm still capable physically.

In the past, I've prided myself in that I'm the kind of person that thinks ahead in life. But sometimes that results in living life ahead of your time as well. We don't need to be planning our funerals. When that time comes, we can let someone else do that. And even though we all age and our bodies will slowly weaken, we don't have to act like that has happened until it actually does.

Since we don't decide when this curtain closes on our show, there's no reason to fret about it just because we know it's going to happen. Yet we do. And I'm not sure why we let ourselves worry so much about something that we have very little control over. You know, to the best of your ability, you live a good life, you live healthy.

You don't abuse your body too much and that's it. After that, what can you do? So, I don't think it matters that you're a year older. And I don't think we should let it cause us distress. When you're alien, you may have a good reason to let yourself be distressed, but until that point, you're a capable actor on this good earth, and there's nothing stopping you.

It may be true that if we look to the future, we can prepare a little bit, we can make those life decisions that will keep us healthier longer, and we can prepare early for things like retirement, but beyond those, I don't think we need to worry about it. I would almost say, live like you're in your 20s.

Just don't be stupid, and don't take your body for granted, or live selfishly like you may have in your 20s. There's a phrase that I don't actually really like, but there is a wisdom to it, so I'm going to bring it up anyways. You've probably heard the phrase YOLO. You only live once. It never sat well with me because I felt like it was used more as an excuse to make bad decisions rather than a useful perspective.

If you can remove that juvenile approach to it, there is some wisdom there. You only live once, so you need to make the most of this time that you have, not by seeking out temporary happiness, which is what a lot of people pursue when they think of YOLO. That term, but rather by achieving deeper meaning and fulfillment.

We need to use our time to create a story that we're proud of. If I make it to heaven, I want to have led a life that I would be proud to tell my dead friends about. I hope I can show them that I didn't waste my days away in frivolous pursuits. That I also didn't waste my time fixated worrying about things I couldn't control.

I hope I can regale them with tales of opportunities taken and mistakes made. I hope I can brag to them about the capable children I raised and the tough goals I achieved. I hope I can show them that I never started acting old until my body forced me to do it. And when I did, I still made the best of my time.

I feel bad already for the other ghosts that have to tell me how they squandered what they had by pursuing fleeting novelty or cheap thrills. I feel bad for the ghosts that have to tell me that they lived their lives so fixated on the future that they didn't notice the birds singing or the people around them that needed them.

I'd weep for the ghosts that never sought out a higher purpose in life and were never fulfilled. And my heart would ache for the ghosts that never challenged themselves and never grew. I think the ghosts that I would want to be friends with are the ones that committed in their life to some kind of value or some set of principles.

The ones that chose to walk through hell to keep those values and principles. And I think they would be the ones that would, frankly, be shining the most brightly. See, today we are living in a story, it's our own story, and it's our choice whether we live out tales that serve as a warning. We're stories that inspire.

We don't have to stop living those stories as we age. I mean, many of us might live well into our 90s. And if you're in your 40s, you arguably have only been a contributing adult for about 15 or so years. If you feel that you're past your prime, just look how old our politicians are. In your 40s, you may have another 30 or 40 years to make your story happen.

If you're 80 and still in good health, you may still be able to sprint to the finish line. The show's not over until you've decided it is, or your body has finally forced you to stop. But until that time, you have life. You have health. You have the capacity to do things. So much can be accomplished in a day.

And even more can be accomplished in a week. And if you give somebody a year, it just goes exponentially. Give them five and wow. It's like they can move mountains if they put that time towards something consistently. I remember when I was abroad once, I saw a man probably in his seventies. carrying giant, probably 50 pound sacks of rice or something.

I don't know what they were, but they were massive. They were, they looked like they would make me buckle, but this guy was so old and he was lugging these things up, like. I couldn't really see the end or where they were going, but he was carrying these things a long ways. Now granted, he probably wished he was doing something else, but I was still surprised that even then, he was still going.

You know, in some ways, I think that there's a freedom to old age. People give up on being so beautiful or even caring that much about it anymore. And if they played their cards right, they might even have a little freedom in their later years to do some fun things and to have a little more time. Thank you.

You know, flowers grow, and then they wilt and they die off, which is part of what makes them so precious. It's, it's it's the fleeting existence of that flower that partially makes us value it so much more. I mean, for some reason, like, one of those fake flowers just doesn't hit quite the same way as a real one.

I mean, I think you can maybe spray some fragrance on it and maybe it would be a little better, but even still, it's just not the same. And so too do we grow to be beautiful and eventually we wilt and wither and that just really isn't something we need to concern ourselves with because it's going to happen regardless of what we do.

So the question becomes rather, do we seek to keep perspective along the way and be grateful for what we're still capable of? Or do we choose to squander our time thinking about time, instead of enjoying the time that we actually have? So ironically, some of the things that we strive so adamantly for, such as wealth, beauty, strength, the preservation of our youth, they're not direct correlations to happiness or satisfaction in life.

I mean, certainly a total lack of any of these things will make our lives harder, but they don't seem to be the wellspring of happiness that we make them out to be. For the amount of effort we put into them, you'd think that they would just be just such a miracle as far as making us happier, but I don't think that's the case.

I think people that are a little older tend to actually be a little happier and more content, and they're often the poorest in each of those categories. If a poor person can be happy, I don't see why I can't be happy. If an ugly person can be happy, I don't see why I can't be happy. If someone in their 90s can be happy, then I don't see why I can't.

If a weak person can be happy, then so can I. It may be hard to watch our youth slowly slip away. But it's really a matter of perspective. And so long as you still have time on this earth, you have something to be grateful for because your story is not over. So to sum up here, fear not for tomorrow, because you still have today.