15 ms·
Ah, the twenties. How's the saying go? "In your twenties you worry what people think of you, in your thirties you stop caring, in your forties you realize no
by howeyc 10y ago
Ah, the twenties.
How's the saying go?
"In your twenties you worry what people think of you, in your thirties you stop caring, in your forties you realize no one spends any time thinking about you anyway."
- dominotw 10y agocan't wait for forties. I always thought 'good stuff' stops coming in mid thirties when you finally feel aging take effect, but looks good stuff keeps coming :)>
- wiremine 10y agoI'm almost there and it's all totally true.
- balabaster 10y agoIt takes a while before the realization that the world doesn't really give much of a shit about you kicks in and you're like "Oh, really?" then you go through a mildly deflated feeling of disconnection from society because nobody cares and then one day it hits you like Mac truck "Oh! Nobody cares! I can do whatever the fuck I want because, nobody cares!" and it liberates you. If only we'd all realized that in our 20's.
- louprado 10y agoIf you can say this in your mid-30's and your parents are well, then chances are your 40's will be similar. At 45 and I can honestly say I have never been healthier mentally or physically. It's great! Other than presbyopia, which is easily corrected, and gray hairs, which takes <10 minutes a month for my barber to extract, I too have yet to notice any effects of aging. Given that my 77 year old dad says the same, I may have hit the genetic lottery. I suspect he will just unexpectedly die one day while mowing the lawn, never having known what it is like to feel old.
- michael_h 10y ago> gray hairs, which takes <10 minutes a month for my barber to extract Let 'em grow, man. Good enough for George Clooney, good enough for me.
- maxerickson 10y agoThe fun thing is that either choice is vanity. (I started getting gray hairs at ~25)
- su30mki117 10y agoI recently turned 28, have lots of gray hair. I don't do anything to cover it or care what others think of it.
- devuo 10y agoI'm 28 and I wouldn't give it more than 5 to go full gray, as it's progressing quite nicely. I enjoy the grays :-)
- nl 10y agoTwo bad things: 1) I can't just eat shit and not get fat anymore. I made that mistake around 35, and it took a lot of hard work to reverse it. 2) Thining hair. Did you know that some people say that a "cure" for baldness might be worth more commercially than a cure for cancer? I don't feel that strongly about it, but it is kinda annoying. Not much to complain about really.
- Jaruzel 10y agoNo. 1 is utterly true. It's like I hit 40, and my whole metabolism just spun down to about 60%, the weight piled on despite no change to my diet or lifestyle. I'm still overweight (40" waist, 5'11" height), but having never really exercised in the past, getting the motivation to do it (and more importantly keep at it) is really hard. So now I eat yoghurts instead of bagels, and stare miserably at my sugarless fat free white tea. For all the good it does...
- nl 10y agoI found that walking in the morning can kick-start your metabolism and helps. A bit. But basically I had to eat less. Soup was my trick - warm chicken noodle soup was on 30 kcal, but the liquid filled up my stomach.
- dominotw 10y ago1 good meal and 1 activity a day. not being too hard on yourself is the key to winning this :).
- dominotw 10y agoI got hit with 1 too, I caught it early fortunately. Don't miss fried food anymore but I have cravings for desserts which I never had in my 20's :\ About 2, I started balding in my teens and my hairline more or less stabilized in 30's. Full head of hair was never part of identity, 'me according me' has been bald for a while. 20's sucked being bald but became irrelevant in 30's :D.
- Analemma_ 10y agoWhat a strange saying; I think I went through that pattern 10 years ahead of schedule.
- cushychicken 10y agoHow lucky you are! Legitimately envious. :)
- elboru 10y agoI'm in my late twenties, and I just started trying to stop caring, but it's a little more difficult than I thought it would be.
- hughes 10y agoGive it another year or two. Turning 30 in a few weeks, can feel the caring beginning to evaporate on its own.
- noobermin 10y agoI'm 26 and I almost nearly don't care and can't relate to half the things the article said. According to (unscientific) Myer's Briggs, I am very strongly introverted, however.
- munificent 10y agoIn my late thirties. I didn't stop caring, I just got so full caring about other stuff—wife, kids, family, career, various projects, etc.—that I just didn't have as much capacity left to worry about what people think about me as much.
- maxerickson 10y agoWhen you stop trying, you'll know you've stopped caring.
- sverige 10y agoAnd in your fifties you don't even think about this kind of thing any more. I love getting older.
- paulddraper 10y agoAnd in your sixties you're too tired to think about it, and in your seventies you can't remember, right? ;)
- noobermin 10y agoAnd probably more focused on the toilet[0]. [0] http://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/13269334_1742416042670692_1100212497_n.jpg http://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/13269334_17...
- TeMPOraL 10y agoGuys, you're seriously amplifying my midlife crisis, and I'm only 28 now.
- sverige 10y agoOh, that midlife crisis thing. Just survive it when it comes. Don't wait around for it or look for it, either. It'll find you on its own time, and you won't necessarily realize what it is till it's over. Then, things are better than ever, and you'll think things like, "Why did I do all that stupid shit when I was younger?" Then you'll chuckle and go on with your day. It's not that bad.
- silverlake 10y agoCan confirm. Mid 40s, now wear socks with sandals. It's comfortable and I don't care I look like my dad.
- sjrd 10y agoMid 20s, have been wearing socks with sandals for years. It's confortable and I don't care I look like my grand-dad. (My sister in law is desperate that I'll never find a girlfriend, though ...)
- sotojuan 10y agoThough I don't wear socks with sandals (find it uncomfortable) I've found most people don't care or follow "fashion rules" people post online. I recently saw one about not wearing shorts after you're 20 years old... I just had to roll my eyes. Enjoy wearing pants all the time in the summer.
- jdmichal 10y agoA lot of the "fashion rules" were made up by people in New England and other cooler climates. As you said, good luck wearing long pants through the southern US summer, which spans from May to November, when it then becomes "fall-spring" until next May. Also of note is seersucker suits and guayabara shirts, both of which see much more formal use in the south.
- sotojuan 10y agoAgreed, but even rules aren't followed. If you go anywhere in the summer in New England you'll find people in shorts (even in upper class areas). In NYC this summer I feel bad for the finance people who probably suffered from a heat stroke while wearing a suit during our hottest days. People online will make up rules like "men who wear this are children!" which are never based in reality. And to keep on topic, I'm sure they too stop caring by age 40 :-)
- 10y ago
- apatters 10y agoTrue so far in my experience (35 with friends of every age level.) But there are also many solutions to loneliness. My engineery brain solved it for me by figuring out that inviting people to group events, preferably ones that represent mutual interests, is a good foot in the door. Once your confidence increases a bit you can pursue deeper relationships with some of these people, as well as further amplify your results by actually organizing something you're interested in that has reach outside of you -- think of a meetup group or business/technical community. Eventually you have hundreds of acquaintances, many will cheerfully meet you for the occasional coffee or beer, and you can start being selective about who you spend time with based on deeper shared connections. (Prior to that you'll probably have to put up with some colorful characters and learn to limit the damage they do to you.) Not claiming to have made any of this up or that it is easy, it's hard, it takes years, it's been talked about it before. But I think I summarized it pretty well there (there are many more nuances to learn of course).
- iman453 10y agoAny of you folks in your 30's and 40's have any advice on how to fast track this process a bit?
- epoxyhockey 10y agoGet married and have some kids. You will stop caring about what others think pretty quickly.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- StillBored 10y agoYah, my first kid, I was so sleep deprived, all I could think all day long was "God I want to take a nap", then it got worse..
- balabaster 10y agoYeah, realize now that unless you're making daily headlines for your misdeeds or any gossip you may be generating is actively and visibly impeding your life, even those that gossip about you will be gossiping about something/one else tomorrow. In the grand scheme of things, as far as the world at large is concerned, you're meaningless. Not to say you are meaningless, you're quite probably a most lovely person, but if you take the number of people who know you, that you care about and care what they think, divide that by the number of people in the world and the resulting number relates somehow to the amount of significance you have. Given that lack of significance, which is remarkably unfair considering how awesome you are, does it really matter what you do as long as it doesn't land you in prison or impede your freedom? I mean, if nobody gives a shit, why should you waste time caring about what they think? It doesn't serve to make you happy in any way...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vtbassmatt 10y agoGo bald and have a child.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- drostie 10y agoMy uncle Guus has been playing viola with an orchestra in the Netherlands for many, many years; he gave me a great way to describe some of this: > When I was young, and my beard was not this gray, and someone at the orchestra was angry with me—could be personal, professional—I would ask myself "what's wrong with me, how do I fix myself?" But I have noticed that now that I am older, and my beard is very gray, when someone is angry with me, I wonder, "what's wrong with him?"—and I don't try to fix anyone.
- sdenton4 10y agoMy favorite version of this insight is that people spend 90+ percent of their time thinking about themselves, leaving a scant 10 percent to think about everyone else. And /your/ share of that 10 percent is vanishingly small, in almost all cases.
- duaneb 10y agoSurely people in their twenties already realize nobody cares about them. My self-consciousness is still there, regardless of how irrational its basis is.
- Akkuma 10y agoI skipped that long line somewhere around my mid to late twenties when it became quite clear that the majority of friends I made amounted to "no one spends any time thinking about you anyway".
- mcguire 10y agoIn your 50s, snakes.
- ionised 10y agoTurned 30 in April. Stopped giving a shit some time around age 19. Got good job, a few good friends, girlfriend. Seems to be working out.