13 ms·

The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

239 points by helsinkiandrew 4y ago

setheron 4y ago
Does anyone ever feel older in their head than their body after their 20s?
- greesil 4y ago
  Yes. I'm in my 40s and am ready for retirement, or at least a change of pace. My sweet little angelic children probably have a lot to do with it.
  - Overtonwindow 4y ago
    I wonder if parents view their age differently than those without children. Kids really aged me. I'm in my 40s but I feel like I am so ready to hang it up and retire. Sit on the front porch with a iPad and a pipe.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ycquestion 4y ago
      I have no kids and I feel very weird about my age. I am about to turn 40 and feel 30 and 60 at the same time. I think of myself as 30, but really feel like 60. I have little energy left after a day at work or even on the weekends. I cannot consistently put energy behind any effort. I used to hack on my side projects before and after work. Now it's a great success if I do it 2-3 hours/month. I feel my mental state declining and worry that I won't be able to get another job ever again. When I say "mental state" I mean capability, energy and maybe even sanity. I think too much about unknowable things like sentients, nature of reality, purpose of life and sometimes wonder if reality is real and it demotivates me. Life feels on rails, like a movie playing in front of me, more than anything I can interact with. I feel like a passenger. Maybe it's just a result of depression and not old age.
      - kayodelycaon 4y ago
        As some who deals with depressive episodes, this sounds familiar. You might want to look into seeing someone. I’d go with therapy before trying medication. There are so many possible sources for depression, so I can’t possibly give any specific, actionable advice. Just remember, you don’t need to settle for how things are now. Good luck, hope things turn around. :)
      - johnrob 4y ago
        Only upon reading your comment a second time did I realize you said “no kids”. What you wrote after sounds exactly what life can feel like for an ambitious hacker (side projects!) confronted with the massive quantity of household work that young children bring about. Passenger is a word I use a lot - my mind hasn’t changed from before kids, but at times it feels like I’m just on the sidelines watching everyone else do stuff, while I change diapers and wash dishes. I’m not anyone to be giving out psychological advice - but given my high “overhead of life” I’ve found it a convenient time to focus on physical health. I just need 30 minutes a day for exercise, and then it’s just a matter of eating healthy. Kids may take my time but they can’t force junk food down my throat! My time will free up down the road - and I think your “muse” will also return with time. Which is why I figure now is a great time to instead focus on health (low opportunity cost wrt side projects). You may as well start with that, and if we believe a lot of what’s written these days, it’s entirely possible that improved diet and exercise might clear and focus your mind too (that would be house money if so). But at least when your drive returns, hopefully the new healthy habits you’ve gained will stick. Last thought - if you can’t think of anything else interesting to work on, I’d recommend blogging about a subject matter you find interesting. Just my 2 cents.
    - usrusr 4y ago
      There's also the reverse effect, with aging childless observing their parenting age-peers go through a "third person youth experience" they don't have themselves.
    - RHSman2 4y ago
      I am most freaked out that you said iPad!
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      I'm 36 and feel the same way. I already have a pacemaker too, though.
    - the_third_wave 4y ago
      That's odd, when I became a father 18 years ago I did not feel any older nor do I feel so now. I'd even go so far as to state that having children - 2 daughters, the youngest is 11 now - put me back in a younger mood since I have been exposed to so much youthful discovery and experimentation again and in some ways still are. If and when one of them gets children themselves I more or less expect the same to happen, another round of exposure to everything being new and in need of discovery. Children don't make you older, they keep you young. Maybe it helps that I don't live in a city but out in the woods on a farm? Discovery here entails tramping through the woods, digging up things, building stuff. Get a bunch of branches and build a "stone-age home", why not? A swing on a rope between two trees or hang up a hammock there and see how high you can make it swing (answer: very). As long as my body plays along - and it better do so or I'll get mighty angry with it - I expect to feel more or less ageless, neither young nor old. If it starts to fail me I'll probably change my mind but for now I simply don't bother with the concept of 'age' - going so far as to have to think about how old I actually am, something which trips up my children every time age is mentioned. It is just a number, something like those vague values seen in a S.M.A.R.T. report telling you about the health of a drive: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 116 099 006 Does it matter that the Raw_Read_Error_Rate is not 'perfect' as long as it does not go below the threshold? What does 099 mean here? Just as much as 57 means when talking about my age...
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Hah so I'm not alone! Until 5 years ago every moment was spent on some sort of hobby or interest. I could not begin to comprehend those people who would finish their day aNd then conk out in front of tv. Now... It's a special night if we have enough energy for tv once kids are in bed :->
    - greesil 4y ago
      I miss having hobbies. Any side project I embark upon has an immediate cost to my marriage. As in my partner gets mad at me because I should be helping deal with the little ones.
      - boomerango 4y ago
        Home improvement catch 22 - damned if the drywall goes unpatched, damned if I spend an hour driving to the hardware store and fixing it, away from the kids.
        caleblloyd 4y ago
        I never thought we would fight over who gets to mow the lawn. An hour of peace during the daytime!
        vidanay 4y ago
        Ha! I have a rather large property, and I thoroughly enjoy putting on my headphones and hopping on the riding mower for three hours on a Saturday afternoon.
      - sgtnoodle 4y ago
        I bought a steam deck. It's not a joke that I can tweak settings on it all day, but within 10 seconds of launching a game I want to play, my wife shouts my name, the baby starts crying, or the 4 year old trips and falls. At least my favorite technical achievement of the deck is its reliable suspend button.
  - jakzurr 4y ago
    Not to worry - both of my parents perked up quite a bit after my 5 sibs and I were past our teens. It was fun to watch!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chordalkeyboard 4y ago
  feeling older than your body's age in calendar years is a symptom of ptsd (not in every case) (yes I feel older and yes in my case it is a symptom of ptsd)
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  I feel way older than I actually am, but I spend much of my life being manic. Mania has a way of accelerating life. Once I got diagnosed and treated, everything slowed down. My mind and body feel like I’m in my fifties and I’m in my mid thirties. It feels like I have more life experience than most of the people my age. On the other hand, a friend and I were walking along a frozen river throwing snowballs just to hear them splat on the ice. Neither of us will ever grow out of that. We have no shame in taking joy in simple things. We’re responsible, mature adults where we need to be. :)
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  Yes. I've long felt time pressure. It wasn't until I was thirty and finally working in the career I'd wanted to work in since I was about 10 or so that I felt just 30. And my mid 20s were a time when my body was in the best shape of my life; but I still felt as if time was passing too swiftly.
- analog31 4y ago
  I'm 59, and I've noticed cognitive changes as I've gotten older. Perhaps the biggest ones are: 1) How much distraction and interruption I can tolerate before I lose my flow. 2) How long it takes to get back into flow when picking up something I worked on months or years ago. I was going to add 3) How long it takes to find something on my computer, but that might be a function of adding more stuff and never getting rid of anything. I don't think I was more organized as a kid, just there was less stuff to organize. In terms of things like social attitudes, having kids go through high school and college age was a big "reset" button, because I kind of observed the world through their eyes and listened to their arguments. They're the ones who have to live with this ** after all.
- justinator 4y ago
  I lost my parents at age 20, and instantly felt 30 for the next 10 years- and the next 10 years after that. One of the silver linings of losing parents so young is getting a genuine interest to not have that happen to you, so I've made my health a pretty important part of my life - enough so that I won't die in my 50's unless a freak accident happens. My body could be misplaced for a 30 year old, even if my face looks 40.
- mjklin 4y ago
  The writer David Rakoff of This American Life fame said that he felt 47 ever since his 20s. Coincidentally, he died at 47 from cancer.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  I was 55, and I felt maybe 30 or 40. Then I pulled a hamstring. I felt about 80 for the next few weeks, because walking was so much slower and more painful. Yeah, I know, it's just an temporary thing, but while it lasted it really did shift my perception of my age.
- flangola7 4y ago
  I've felt 45 since I was 15. I'm 39. No kids, still living the single college (but without college) life. A little chronic physical illness and a lot of mental illness. It's nice to finally say "Oh I don't know if I have it in me to do that today." and have people actually accept your answer. I don't miss youth because I never experienced it. Would have killed myself long ago but I never worked up the willpower to even achieve that (also no guns or high cliffs in my country - when you start researching it you find it's surprisingly hard to reliably end a life without suffering). I'm finally finding life slightly enjoyable for once being an old fart. I tutor a handful of teenage Gen Z kids and it's unnerving how much I can relate to them. Neither of us expect to have much of a future - for me it was my medical issues and suicidal thoughts, but for them it's the outside world they're going into. Two of my brightest students have said they don't expect to make it to 40 and if they do life will be much much harder. They're healthy, happy, mentally well - but with both political and literal climate going the way they are they can't see humanity realistically making it that far without some kind of mass war, famine, genocide, not to even mention untold horrors AI will usher in.
- RHSman2 4y ago
  I felt I had my first life crisis at 27. I felt older and that I should be doing less silly things. That led me to doing what I wanted as I couldn’t bare a life like that. P.s 46 now and coming into my 2nd adolescence
- uonpopular_th 4y ago
  I've been 50 since I was 12. I wonder what will happen when my body catches up with my age.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Yeah I think I've been 40-50 since I was a teenager.
- bigger_cheese 4y ago
  I'm 38 I'd say I began to feel I was getting older in the last 5 years or so. I used to go out every Friday night and carry on into the long hours of the night. Nowadays by the time Friday comes around I'm completely exhausted. I've noticed it with sleep as well - these days if I stay up later than usual or I have a poor night of sleep I really feel it at work the next day. Lastly my metabolism has changed I've never really struggled with my weight but last 2 years or so I have begun putting on weight and for the first time in my life I am starting to develop a gut. I suspect some of it was due to pandemic and being less active than usual during that time but I really started to notice it towards the end of last year.
- larati 4y ago
  Way older. I can't imagine saying I feel 22. I am still in good shape pushing 50 but not like at 22. On the mental side though I was utterly clueless at 22. Pretty clueless at 40 even.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
"I'm a 30 year old boy.."
jacquesm 4y ago
"Inside every old person is a young person that wonders what the fuck happened".
- homarp 4y ago
  as illustrated by TikTok "teenage filter" - https://mobile.twitter.com/memotv/status/1628758590033993728 https://mobile.twitter.com/memotv/status/1628758590033993728
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    LOL where are the old people?
- dehrmann 4y ago
  When we're young, the world is full of opportunities. As we get older, the doors to those opportunities close, and fewer things seem possible.
  - uonpopular_th 4y ago
    Not really. There's just as many opportunities in every age, it's just that you've been burned enough times to realize that the majority of opportunities are nothing of the sort.
    - tenpies 4y ago
      I think the better example is that when you're young, the world hasn't sorted you into a bucket yet. Education, university, and your first jobs are largely that process: figuring out in which bucket you'll fit in society. When you're older, if you want to change buckets, there is no easy mechanism. Even going back to university is clunky. It's by no means impossible, but I do wonder if we're missing out as a society for not having a very formalized process for adults who want to change buckets later in life. The other problem is for lengthy training periods. Giving up 10 years for education and training when you're 20 is acceptable. When you're in your 30s or 40s, why that's a substantial amount of the time you have left before society decides you are old and must retire.
Tarsul 4y ago
it doesn't help that the dreams I have are also of yesteryear events.
thunderbong 4y ago
"The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is still young" - Oscar Wilde
- Sai_ 4y ago
  Someone should invent an Oscar Wilde quote generator like they did for Deepak Chopra. I’ve been guilty of using OW’s quotes but does the format have to be so predictable? “The <$5 word for an emotion> with/of <noun> is not that it <does a banal thing> but that <slightly offbeat insight>”. 1. The surprising thing about rain is not that it falls during your parade but that it never does when you have to attend someone else’s. 2. Some people read books to educate themselves, others to subjugate others. 3. I have nothing to declare but I’m too much of a genius to just “No” when asked. How did I do?
  - uonpopular_th 4y ago
    1 and 2 are great, 3 isn't.
    - Sai_ 4y ago
      3. The difficulty with my genius is not that it’s there but that you don’t seem have any to recognise mine.
      - Aeolun 4y ago
        I feel like it can be simplified, but it’s basically there :)
Scubabear68 4y ago
This does not feel surprising to me. I think you mentally lock into the age where you really bloomed into your adult self. For many, that is their early 20s. For me, it is around 30 (I am in my 50s). And then that perceived age very slowly drifts up, but still with considerable lag to “real” age.
pasquinelli 4y ago
you can't know how it feels to be older than you are, you can only know how it looks. from that you're free to guess how it feels, but you're probably wrong. me, i've felt 9 since i was 9. it's actually kind of weird, i remember waking up on the morning of my ninth birthday, and that's where my episodic memory begins. i have earlier memories, but they're outside of time.
pbj1968 4y ago
I feel every one of my years. A relative in her 90s used to joke that if you asked her, she was still 15 or 16. So it goes.
- KarlKemp 4y ago
  15 or 16 feels strange. Maybe the war years, or shortly before?
  - pbj1968 4y ago
    Nailed it.
ordu 4y ago
I think the article gives us a very shallow take on a problem. The first question should be "what is an age perception". The article even calls this perception a bizarre thing (and I agree), but then it throws the question out of the window. Why people think it is a good idea to learn how to guess age? I think, it is because we need to guess age of others to fine tune our communication skills. If it is so, then probably we apply this very guessing abilities to ourselves and get the wrong answer. Which is not very surprising: we see ourselves differently, we see ourselves from the inside, so skills learned for measuring others do not do a great job. So there are some traits, that can be measured based on our appearance and behavior, that are used to predict age, but they looks completely different from the inside. What are they?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
irrational 4y ago
After I turned 50 I mentioned to my Mom that I still felt like I was in my early 20s. She said she felt the exact same way, despite being in her 70s. That was the first time I realized that the discrepancy between how old you are and how old you think you are might be universal. It also made me wonder if this might be why surveys show that in general men prefer women who are in their early 20s. Perhaps men are basing it off of how old they feel (so they are the same age as the women they are seeking) rather than how old they are. Of course, the same surveys show that in general women prefer men near their own actual age. Perhaps women base it off of how old they are rather than how old the think they are. I have no idea if the above has any basis in reality. It’s just a “I wonder…”
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I would assume it’s more of a biology thing because women under 30 are more fertile. We evolved to prefer those markers that signify that age. Of course not all men have this preference etc etc
  - gabereiser 4y ago
    I completely agree but I also think it’s a little bit of ugg. Have you seen the people 40+ on dating apps or online? It’s definitely a flea market.
- Hyption 4y ago
  [flagged]
korroziya 4y ago
I figured this was going to be more about the Zoomers in their twenties who act like perpetual high school students. Did not expect to see the discrepancy between people with and without kids.
xyzelement 4y ago
I think this is just the aftermath (and also, ongoing) of boomer culture. Before that generation, you generally had kids in your late 20s and grandkids in your 50s. If you were 80, you were a great grandparent. All these titles conveyed an age. By the time you were those ages, you acted that age. Boomers I think invented the 40 is the new 30 and 70 is the new 50 nonsense, so of course they are confused about what age they are. It's easy to "feel 20" when you haven't taken on the appropriate responsibility. I am an example of that. I am 41, only married 3 years, to a younger woman and we have a baby and a toddler. Just bought a house etc. Very easy to feel young with all that, but the reality is I am more like "late to the party" - this all should have happened 10-14 years ago. I'd feel "older" if my kid was going into highschool rather than pre-school right now.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  Just so you know, "haven't taken on the appropriate responsibility" really sounds like you are judging people whose life choices differ from yours. Nobody has a responsibility to procreate.
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    I am talking about responsibility as in being responsible for people (spouse, kids, grandkids in this case.) It's easier to "feel young" when you don't have that.
    - BobbyJo 4y ago
      It's the "appropriate" that gives it the negative connotation. Maybe you meant "the responsibilities necessary to feel an age", but it came off as "the responsibilities you should have at an age".
      - xyzelement 4y ago
        Good clarification prompt, thank you. I meant the former definition but they are intertwined for me so it makes sense that it came out ambiguously. To elaborate: As I grow up, I see in myself and others a deeper life satisfaction from being parents/grandparents at "the appropriate age." This was not obvious to me when I was 20-30. So I don't mean for "appropriate" to suggest you owe it to anybody to reproduce, but I do believe that it's a path most likely to yield the most satisfaction for a typical person. (As an analogy, I can say the "appropriate" weight for a 6 ft tall man like me is 170-180LBs. That doesn't mean that I am obligated to lose 20LBs, just that my life would be better if I did)
thomastjeffery 4y ago
It seems to me that in constructing an answer to that question, we are weighing our social and developmental progress against the ages we generally associate to social and developmental milestones. It's a bit like asking someone how far they have walked today. They aren't going to go back and count the steps. Instead, they will consider what landmarks they passed, and what events they encountered, try to add them all together, and compare that sum against other distances traveled that they do have explicit measurements for. The length of a journey is most often described, not as an accounting of unit measure, but from weighing the complexity of the story one would tell about it. This kind of narrative measurement is already present in most of our conversations about age. What age do people learn to read, to swim, or to ride a bicycle? How old is a grandparent? Are you too late in life to start a family? When should a person begin retirement? All of those narratives set a rubric of expectations: a domain and scale for age itself. When we ask someone how old they "feel", we are intentionally vague. We are asking for the "age" that isn't defined by time. So a person constructs a new definition or of the narratives that are familiar to them, and tells us where they see themselves in that collection of narratives.
bilsbie 4y ago
I’m in my 40s and I still automatically get out of the public pool when they blow the whistle.
zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
I'm 35. Really the only time I feel older than 20 is when I'm hungover. Never really got hangovers until I was in my late 20s
RHSman2 4y ago
Tendons. Once beautiful, stretchy creatures that probably now resemble a curmudgeon being asked to be nice to a neighbor. Been playing soccer with my soccer mad 8 yr old. I too was that guy. Brings me back and I am so much better at technique now but boy oh boy does my hip and lower back hurt the next day!!!
- jacquesm 4y ago
  There is a funny Dutch song called 'you're getting older dad' that has this passage in it: "I'm still winning at pong, but it costs him little trouble and me more and more..."
- dehrmann 4y ago
  > lower back hurt the next day "Next day" makes me think it's just DOMS.
  - RHSman2 4y ago
    My MRI on my hip and lower lumbar would tell you other wise.
    - dehrmann 4y ago
      Back MRIs are weird. You'll get people with herniated discs with no symptoms and people with clean MRIs in pain. And of course, people experiencing pain that the MRI finds the cause of. It's also possible to have two sources of pain. It could be DOMS plus a herniated disc. I'm mostly pointing this out because "back pain" has scary connotations, any sort of pain gets them worried, even if it's just DOMS.
      - RHSman2 4y ago
        It’s a inflamed joint creating sciatic nerve ‘irritation’ and Some disc compression. And some DOMS :)
- rramadass 4y ago
ericol 4y ago
What's news, pussycat. If we talk about how I feel, I think I'll be forever 30; that was around the time in my life when I had the most friends, experienced the most, traveled the most and had the most fun. But then, last year I turned 50, and the realization that I have a lot more behind me than ahead is a thought that lives rent free in my mind now.
- JALTU 4y ago
  And for me, the rent ahead is not so "free!" Making money was ego and self-discovery when young. It's all-too-practical now with a degree of urgency I'd not ever felt before.
- LBJsPNS 4y ago
  "the realization that I have a lot more behind me than ahead is a thought that lives rent free in my head now" That's a limitation you placed on yourself. At 55 I divorced a lead weight and started investigating opportunities. At 67 I am doing more and accomplishing more of my own dreams than I ever have. Don't ever underestimate yourself or your options, no matter what your age.
  - ericol 4y ago
    I guess it's never too late to divorce a lead weight. All in all, I'm happy for you.
erentz 4y ago
What would be the evolutionary conditions that would lead us to mentally think we are older as we age? For much of evolutionary history we were expected to produce offspring then kick the bucket. No advantage to feeling older, not even expected to get that much older than what most people feel. If we solved the problem of aging this wouldn’t be a puzzle at all and it would immediately make perfect sense. The age we feel we are would correspond roughly to the age we were fully developed (mid 20s) and the age our body would stay at without aging.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  It's almost certainly a mistake to think that every feature of a system subject to selection pressure is a result of that selection pressure. Most real world selection leaves plenty of room for features to emerge (or disappear) that don't change selection fitness.
cassonmars 4y ago
I wonder how much this schism exists in people who were near death in a “younger” age. I’ve had a couple of reminders of my mortality from my 20s to early 30s now and it’s firmly grounded a “now or never” mindset to getting things done, because nothing is guaranteed. In the same vein, I’m very continually aware of my age and am mindful of the statistically likely years I have left. Memento Mori.
- bennyelv 4y ago
  Interestingly, I’ve experienced exactly the same thing, but the outcome is that I care very little about what people think would be an “age appropriate” approach to life and just optimise for maximum fulfilment right now, whatever form that takes.
euroderf 4y ago
George Bernard Shaw: "Youth is wasted on the young."
electric_mayhem 4y ago
A mentor told me that he felt like he was about twenty until after his first heart attack and bypass surgery. After that, he said, he felt like he had aged a ton.
- ipnon 4y ago
  People take for granted the cardiac muscle dutifully pumping away oxygen and nutrients to each extremity. A weak heart makes it difficult to move, difficult to think. Once your heart deteriorates everything else quickly follows.
neilk 4y ago
I still feel like the upstart who barely knows what he is doing. The only difference is the people around me. I used to be surrounded by people I looked up to, who seemed to know everything. But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent and they're acting like I am the established authority, which just shows how little they must know!
- PcChip 4y ago
  I feel this, thought I was the only one
- twiddling 4y ago
  You realized that everyone else has been faking it too
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  Yes, I don't feel any smarter but I see others missing what I think are obvious observations and actions much more frequently. I'm also OK being the same fraud I've felt like since my 20's. Starting to be comfortable in my skin, I just wish it wasn't so wrinkly now that I can enjoy it.
- sdwr 4y ago
  Nice
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Haha, yeah. I absolutely recognice that. It’s really weird to imagine that some of the people I work with were babies when I left university.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  I don't get this TBH. I work with younger coworkers and I recognize them falling for similar traps I did years/decade ago. I don't see my coworkers getting less competent, I'm just aware that I did way more stupid shit than they did and have the benefit of experience.
  - 4y ago
JALTU 4y ago
I wonder if others here found their mental age aging more rapidly after certain life events? The wake of aging parents transitioning (death, stroke/care home) has without doubt accelerated my mental age, which in turn has changed what I'd call my horizon. When younger and prior to said events, the horizon was far away; time enough for everything/anything. Not so much anymore, much greater sense of uncertainty.
- hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
  I feel that after kid was born. Chronic sleep deprivation and depression are the reasons. Not sure when will nd hopefully not too long.
  - tenpies 4y ago
    I found depression to be a two-edged sword in the aging department. Mentally, I felt older, "an old soul". But physically, not having the energy to do anything, sleeping almost in excess, not going outside, not laughing or smiling . . . they all seem to have kept my body younger.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    About 18 years.
    - hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
      Nooooooooooo!
      - adastra22 4y ago
        No seriously you get into huge groove after a while. But it’s never back to the life you had before.
- incanus77 4y ago
  Feels so for me. I'm nearing 46, and all through my 30s I felt (and was told) that I seemed younger. My wife passed from cancer when I was 39 and I feel like all that time caught up to me in the next year or so. Now I feel (and I think, look) age-appropriate, have begun to definitely feel the aging. However, I've also made more serious efforts towards good nutrition and exercise and am feeling much healthier than other periods of my life. But mentally, I'm incredibly presently aware of every day and how uncertain any future days with anyone, let alone myself, actually are.
yawgmoth 4y ago
Curious how old other formerly closeted queer folks feel (particularly those who came out as adults). I have felt 30 since I hit puberty. I imagine it's from being hyper vigilant about policing my own behavior and body language.
- mrbabbage 4y ago
  As someone who came out at 18 (technically an adult), both: - younger—I had a vastly accelerated "social puberty" bc I started so much later than most folks. - older—for the reason you mentioned. - but now younger again—I don't feel the same pressure to have biokids, and thus not beholden to the "biological clock" that forces birthing parents to start families in their 30s. I'm 32 and just went back to school, because why not! Plus, the pressure of the white gay dating scene forces me to take better care of myself (sleep, diet, exercise), which also make me feel younger.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Think I've generally been 19 since the age of 19. Mostly to do with energy and uncertainty about life direction that has nothing to do with sexuality, but most friends my age have kids... In my earlier teens I might have been able to sound like a young adult talking about something like politics, but if anything I was all the more early teenager in terms of uncertainty over sexuality and how people would react.
- omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
  That sounds right. I feel similarly for different reasons (have to be vigilant and police my own behavior because of health issues).
- frimsah 4y ago
  I think you're on to something with the expanded self-consciousness that comes with always monitoring your own behavior/body language at the onset of puberty. I think there are other situations where a young person would also develop this kind of hyper vigilance. For me it's always made me feel older than my peers like you say.
slowhadoken 4y ago
It’s not uncommon for me to be in a conversation with someone in their 30’s or 40’s and they think I’m younger than them. I still get hit on by 18, 19, and 20 year olds. I’m not interested but it’s flattering. Perspective and attitude go a long way.
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  Same here. I think it's negatively affected my career prospects too, not that I care too much about that. Never thought it would be advantageous to be a schlubby balding guy, but I saw someone start the same day as me get way more respect immediately despite me being pretty clearly more technically competent than him. Maybe he was schmoozing behind the scenes, I don't know.
majkinetor 4y ago
I don't feel age. I don't care. 20 or 80, its all the same to me.
cwp 4y ago
I've had this basically my whole life. I used to joke that I was 16 going on 30 and everybody knew what I meant. Now it's going the other way. Also, I have this for other people. I still think of my brother as 23, and I have to do math to figure out how old he really is.
globalise83 4y ago
I am in the interesting position of being close to 40 and only just in the past year becoming able to grow a proper beard. So, I consider myself a slightly cleaner-living 18 year old.
thriftwy 4y ago
I never had any problem with my age, but. This year I've turned 38 and for some reason this number stopped being funny. I know a lot people make a fuss about turning 40, but for me the transition happened to be 38.
- cm2012 4y ago
  Passing actual middle age based on life expectancy!
nl 4y ago
One "interesting" thing about aging as a guy is that male pattern baldness starts at the back of the head where it's really difficult to see on yourself. I didn't really realize how much hair I'd lost until I saw a random photo of a crowd of people with me in it with my back to the camera. That was quite a surprise.
nl 4y ago
Link to "people feel 20% younger paper": https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03193996.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03193996.pdf The curves really are very good!
shynrou 4y ago
Feels weird reading of all these same experiences. Since my childhood I always felt older than I was. Any body got a similar experience?
- sdwr 4y ago
  I wanted to be (?) an old man sometimes as a kid, and would walk around pretending to have arthritic joints.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Sort of? I felt like I always hung out with people older than me, but recently it’s inverted.
- frimsah 4y ago
  Yeah for a few years I thought I was actually +2 older than I was. This started to happen after some major life events that threw everything I knew into question. Since that happened I've found it difficult (or boring) to relate to people who are younger than me. Most of my friends are older.
tmtvl 4y ago
I am 33 yet feel mentally like an 80 year old dementia patient. Physically I'm fine, I can do kip ups all day long, but I feel like I have forgotten more than I can ever hope to relearn.
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  Near 50 and the exact opposite. Mentally I'm sharper than ever (low bar) but physically starting to feel old. I still have some fairly aggressive physical ambitions but wondering if I've got what it takes to accomplish them. 30's through mid 40's was the best physical segment of my life.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I feel like this is because it’s the first time any signs of age start to show. I’m 35 and my body just doesn’t like the things I did with it even 10 years ago. Half of my beard is gray. I feel like this is something that should happen to other ‘older’ people.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
    35 was when I first started needing naps after the lunch at work. That's when I realized I need to save enough money by 50 to retire from my programming job, and I did.
DataJunkie 4y ago
I am in my late 30s. I feel like after the pandemic I started visually aging. Part of the problem was that I lost a lot of weight at the same time, so I do actually look a bit different. People tell me I am crazy. I feel like my hair is receding though nobody notices it and in photos it really looks the same for the past 10 years. I feel like there is me at my age, there is some illusion of me at my age, and me at the age I feel. I feel young. On average, I feel about 25 mentally and maybe 30 physically, but sometimes I feel like I am stuck as a precocious 15 year old. I have a silly sense of humor. I feel like as my numerical age increases, the more I am expected to be boring and not be myself anymore. Quite frankly, it's led me into a depression.
- racked 4y ago
  Don't worry so much about it. Really. Stop worrying. Allow it to just be and surround you as a fact of life.
fernly 4y ago
Actually turning 80 caused a mental shift. I'd be doing something and think, wait, should an 80-year-old be doing this? Something about the number made my mental age repeatedly try to re-align with the physical. The effect lasted a few days then faded.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm 80 and feel about 40. I'm a little slower, that's all. Sometimes, I'll be walking past a shop window and say, "Who's that old dude?"
  - XorNot 4y ago
    If I'm can be 80 and feel no older then 40 (which is...christ, 3 years away) then I would call that an absolute win. So you're clearly doing a lot right.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    That’s nice though. Until I was like 30 years of age I felt like a child compared to all the ‘adults’ around me, but now I just feel like everyone from 30-100 is more or less the same, just at different stages of life.
  - alchemist1e9 4y ago
    That is pretty neat. How is coding at 80? I’m in late 40s and I’m hoping coding is something that can stick with you, I’ve read it definitely can.
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      It's a lot of fun. I'm back to my old interest - small systems programming on the bare metal. I did Nand2Tetris several years ago, and now I'm following the work of people like Tunney and DeVault as they bootstrap de novo. 100rabbits is also fascinating. I'm working on an electronics program for the local makerspace - some combination of ham radio topics, microcontrollers and sensors - trying to figure out some good projects that can pull those fields together and get the younger crowd to realize they are carrying four microwave radios and a supercomputer in their pockets and that they ought to be interested in rf electronics. Trying to get the makerspace off of Google Docs, Photoshop, Twitter, and other proprietary software and onto FOSS hardware and software is really an uphill battle. It's so convenient.
garrisonj 4y ago
There is an asymmetry here, because, for the most part, you can’t know what it feels like to be an age until you’ve been it. So it will be more common to feel your age or younger because that's what you've experienced. If you feel worn out when you are 25, you just think that’s what being 25 feels like.
Barrin92 4y ago
I think a lot of it has to do with the quite heavy expectations that historically came with age and the demand to conform in a certain way. For example you see a lot of people today who grew up on the internet and are now into their 40s say "I'm too old for this, I shouldn't enjoy this as much" etc. The expectation to behave a certain way and what people really want creates a sort of mismatch. And really it's kind of silly because when someone is 50 and says they feel like they're 35 that's probably because there's really not that much of a difference. Their brain just works all the same. The reverse is true as well I think. A lot of kids 'feel older' in their head than they are and that's probably just because they're not as different as we treat them. That we treat older and younger people like different species sometimes has always been weird to me.
ggm 4y ago
The most apt song for this situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdMWHB6Kz3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdMWHB6Kz3A
maerF0x0 4y ago
I feel about 60 after leg day. I feel about 20 whenever I get on my motorcycle or around a pretty girl I know I'm exactly my age by what time I go to bed.
SunghoYahng 4y ago
Actually, I'm a trans-age (you know, years are biological and ages are social). There is always a mismatch between my biological years and the age of my soul. So I identified myself as a guy whoes age is 20.
paulpauper 4y ago
You know you are getting old when you're older than athletes, entertainers, etc.
foogazi 4y ago
Years ago I asked my then 95yo late grandmother how old she felt in her mind and she said 17 I keep that in mind when I look at old people, just trapped in an old body
exabrial 4y ago
I feel like I'm 28. Until I go riding with someone that's 28, then I'm quickly reminded I'm far older.
cm2012 4y ago
I'm 32 and that feels about right to me. I don't think I've ever felt a mismatch.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Interesting that this article popped up not too long after the discussion about the TikTok "teen" filter, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34918735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34918735. The top comment on that post is "As a GenX who played with that filter yesterday, I don't understand why anyone's reaction would be to cry." Well, this is certainly one reason why.
abalashov 4y ago
I was moderately precocious in my programming and in my career, though probably not terribly so by the standards of this crowd. I got started in C when I was 9 or 10, and ran Linux on the desktop from 6th grade onward, hacked on device drivers and the like in my middle and high school years, that kind of stuff. I had a relatively "meteoric" early career before going out on my own, going through 6 jobs between age 18 and 22, in some cases doubling my income as I went. I was the chief sysadmin of a small local ISP at 19 (which says more about the ISP), and I was holding fairly serious senior titles at more serious companies in the big city by age 21 or so, making more than my dad at the time, who was a professor. (The consequences of being this young and stupid with this much money are a grim topic for another day.) Anyway, the main age-related shift I've experienced is that the socio-professional aura of my skills and experience went from "holy crap, he's 20 year-old wunderkind" to just kind of table stakes. Nobody's really shocked that mid-30s me is pretty good at what I do and have a lot of experience doing it, and it hasn't been a shock in quite a while. Sure, I'm a lot more credible now as a self-employed consultant than I was at, say, 23, but younger me was a bit of a primadonna and had a big head because I front-loaded so much of the career development and climbing the ladder, at least as engineering per se goes. In these settings, lots of older people resent you (for reasons I find very justifiable in hindsight), but plenty of people pat you on the head along the way, too. I'm not praise-dependent in any extraordinary way, I'd like to think, but anyone can be habituated to something pleasant and can it be a bit of a jolt to feel the tide going out. In addition to undergoing the normal humbling that comes with getting older and realising you're not as brilliant as everyone around you leads you to believe, people also stop telling you you're brilliant to begin with. :-)
ekanes 4y ago
Something I've found useful is the idea that you are as old as your spine feels. Seems quite true, at least to me, as both diagnostic and prescription. :)
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
https://archive.ph/nC2bL https://archive.ph/nC2bL
simonblack 4y ago
I've felt about 22 for decades. Probably until my mid forties, I felt I was only about 19. That leads quite often to the situation where you are looking in shock at some elderly, bald person in the mirror while thinking "Who's that old bastard?". Or the sudden realisation "My God! I'm only two and a bit years off 80!" As the article says, there's a difference between the age you feel you are 'in your head' and the age you feel you are 'in your body'. This also is rather annoying as your 'head' feels you can knock over a job completely in an hour or two but when you start doing it, your 'body' lets you down and and you find yourself exhausted about four hours later and stop working, only about a quarter-way through the job.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 4y ago
  Categorising ideas as age specific makes sense. We think differently as we get older, our mind is slower, our ideas change. Categorising the body according to how 'old' it is or feels or looks also makes sense. Categorising consciousness in the same way makes no sense at all, consciousness feels the same from as soon as you are aware of it until the moment you are unaware of it (usually death). The confusion often arises in conflating consciousness with the body or the mind or both.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Hmm, my conciousness now feels significantly different from before. Not necessarily saying it is different, but I experience life differently from when I was 12.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  Same. Once I started seriously considering retirement, admittedly a bit early-ish relative to the usual 65-70, the internal mental model of self has started to shift pretty dramatically, and the hypothetical "I have a lot of things i want to do" plans for the future now have the annotation "and a lot of them need to be done while I am still relatively young enough for them to be plausible." That has honestly shifted the self-perception pretty dramatically. Or maybe I have the cause and effect reversed.

setheron 4y ago

Does anyone ever feel older in their head than their body after their 20s?

greesil 4y ago
Yes. I'm in my 40s and am ready for retirement, or at least a change of pace. My sweet little angelic children probably have a lot to do with it.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  I wonder if parents view their age differently than those without children. Kids really aged me. I'm in my 40s but I feel like I am so ready to hang it up and retire. Sit on the front porch with a iPad and a pipe.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ycquestion 4y ago
    I have no kids and I feel very weird about my age. I am about to turn 40 and feel 30 and 60 at the same time. I think of myself as 30, but really feel like 60. I have little energy left after a day at work or even on the weekends. I cannot consistently put energy behind any effort. I used to hack on my side projects before and after work. Now it's a great success if I do it 2-3 hours/month. I feel my mental state declining and worry that I won't be able to get another job ever again. When I say "mental state" I mean capability, energy and maybe even sanity. I think too much about unknowable things like sentients, nature of reality, purpose of life and sometimes wonder if reality is real and it demotivates me. Life feels on rails, like a movie playing in front of me, more than anything I can interact with. I feel like a passenger. Maybe it's just a result of depression and not old age.
    - kayodelycaon 4y ago
      As some who deals with depressive episodes, this sounds familiar. You might want to look into seeing someone. I’d go with therapy before trying medication. There are so many possible sources for depression, so I can’t possibly give any specific, actionable advice. Just remember, you don’t need to settle for how things are now. Good luck, hope things turn around. :)
    - johnrob 4y ago
      Only upon reading your comment a second time did I realize you said “no kids”. What you wrote after sounds exactly what life can feel like for an ambitious hacker (side projects!) confronted with the massive quantity of household work that young children bring about. Passenger is a word I use a lot - my mind hasn’t changed from before kids, but at times it feels like I’m just on the sidelines watching everyone else do stuff, while I change diapers and wash dishes. I’m not anyone to be giving out psychological advice - but given my high “overhead of life” I’ve found it a convenient time to focus on physical health. I just need 30 minutes a day for exercise, and then it’s just a matter of eating healthy. Kids may take my time but they can’t force junk food down my throat! My time will free up down the road - and I think your “muse” will also return with time. Which is why I figure now is a great time to instead focus on health (low opportunity cost wrt side projects). You may as well start with that, and if we believe a lot of what’s written these days, it’s entirely possible that improved diet and exercise might clear and focus your mind too (that would be house money if so). But at least when your drive returns, hopefully the new healthy habits you’ve gained will stick. Last thought - if you can’t think of anything else interesting to work on, I’d recommend blogging about a subject matter you find interesting. Just my 2 cents.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    There's also the reverse effect, with aging childless observing their parenting age-peers go through a "third person youth experience" they don't have themselves.
  - RHSman2 4y ago
    I am most freaked out that you said iPad!
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    I'm 36 and feel the same way. I already have a pacemaker too, though.
  - the_third_wave 4y ago
    That's odd, when I became a father 18 years ago I did not feel any older nor do I feel so now. I'd even go so far as to state that having children - 2 daughters, the youngest is 11 now - put me back in a younger mood since I have been exposed to so much youthful discovery and experimentation again and in some ways still are. If and when one of them gets children themselves I more or less expect the same to happen, another round of exposure to everything being new and in need of discovery. Children don't make you older, they keep you young. Maybe it helps that I don't live in a city but out in the woods on a farm? Discovery here entails tramping through the woods, digging up things, building stuff. Get a bunch of branches and build a "stone-age home", why not? A swing on a rope between two trees or hang up a hammock there and see how high you can make it swing (answer: very). As long as my body plays along - and it better do so or I'll get mighty angry with it - I expect to feel more or less ageless, neither young nor old. If it starts to fail me I'll probably change my mind but for now I simply don't bother with the concept of 'age' - going so far as to have to think about how old I actually am, something which trips up my children every time age is mentioned. It is just a number, something like those vague values seen in a S.M.A.R.T. report telling you about the health of a drive: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 116 099 006 Does it matter that the Raw_Read_Error_Rate is not 'perfect' as long as it does not go below the threshold? What does 099 mean here? Just as much as 57 means when talking about my age...
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Hah so I'm not alone! Until 5 years ago every moment was spent on some sort of hobby or interest. I could not begin to comprehend those people who would finish their day aNd then conk out in front of tv. Now... It's a special night if we have enough energy for tv once kids are in bed :->
  - greesil 4y ago
    I miss having hobbies. Any side project I embark upon has an immediate cost to my marriage. As in my partner gets mad at me because I should be helping deal with the little ones.
    - boomerango 4y ago
      Home improvement catch 22 - damned if the drywall goes unpatched, damned if I spend an hour driving to the hardware store and fixing it, away from the kids.
      - caleblloyd 4y ago
        I never thought we would fight over who gets to mow the lawn. An hour of peace during the daytime!
        vidanay 4y ago
        Ha! I have a rather large property, and I thoroughly enjoy putting on my headphones and hopping on the riding mower for three hours on a Saturday afternoon.
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      I bought a steam deck. It's not a joke that I can tweak settings on it all day, but within 10 seconds of launching a game I want to play, my wife shouts my name, the baby starts crying, or the 4 year old trips and falls. At least my favorite technical achievement of the deck is its reliable suspend button.
- jakzurr 4y ago
  Not to worry - both of my parents perked up quite a bit after my 5 sibs and I were past our teens. It was fun to watch!
deleted 4y ago
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chordalkeyboard 4y ago
feeling older than your body's age in calendar years is a symptom of ptsd (not in every case) (yes I feel older and yes in my case it is a symptom of ptsd)
kayodelycaon 4y ago
I feel way older than I actually am, but I spend much of my life being manic. Mania has a way of accelerating life. Once I got diagnosed and treated, everything slowed down. My mind and body feel like I’m in my fifties and I’m in my mid thirties. It feels like I have more life experience than most of the people my age. On the other hand, a friend and I were walking along a frozen river throwing snowballs just to hear them splat on the ice. Neither of us will ever grow out of that. We have no shame in taking joy in simple things. We’re responsible, mature adults where we need to be. :)
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
Yes. I've long felt time pressure. It wasn't until I was thirty and finally working in the career I'd wanted to work in since I was about 10 or so that I felt just 30. And my mid 20s were a time when my body was in the best shape of my life; but I still felt as if time was passing too swiftly.
analog31 4y ago
I'm 59, and I've noticed cognitive changes as I've gotten older. Perhaps the biggest ones are: 1) How much distraction and interruption I can tolerate before I lose my flow. 2) How long it takes to get back into flow when picking up something I worked on months or years ago. I was going to add 3) How long it takes to find something on my computer, but that might be a function of adding more stuff and never getting rid of anything. I don't think I was more organized as a kid, just there was less stuff to organize. In terms of things like social attitudes, having kids go through high school and college age was a big "reset" button, because I kind of observed the world through their eyes and listened to their arguments. They're the ones who have to live with this ** after all.
justinator 4y ago
I lost my parents at age 20, and instantly felt 30 for the next 10 years- and the next 10 years after that. One of the silver linings of losing parents so young is getting a genuine interest to not have that happen to you, so I've made my health a pretty important part of my life - enough so that I won't die in my 50's unless a freak accident happens. My body could be misplaced for a 30 year old, even if my face looks 40.
mjklin 4y ago
The writer David Rakoff of This American Life fame said that he felt 47 ever since his 20s. Coincidentally, he died at 47 from cancer.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
I was 55, and I felt maybe 30 or 40. Then I pulled a hamstring. I felt about 80 for the next few weeks, because walking was so much slower and more painful. Yeah, I know, it's just an temporary thing, but while it lasted it really did shift my perception of my age.
flangola7 4y ago
I've felt 45 since I was 15. I'm 39. No kids, still living the single college (but without college) life. A little chronic physical illness and a lot of mental illness. It's nice to finally say "Oh I don't know if I have it in me to do that today." and have people actually accept your answer. I don't miss youth because I never experienced it. Would have killed myself long ago but I never worked up the willpower to even achieve that (also no guns or high cliffs in my country - when you start researching it you find it's surprisingly hard to reliably end a life without suffering). I'm finally finding life slightly enjoyable for once being an old fart. I tutor a handful of teenage Gen Z kids and it's unnerving how much I can relate to them. Neither of us expect to have much of a future - for me it was my medical issues and suicidal thoughts, but for them it's the outside world they're going into. Two of my brightest students have said they don't expect to make it to 40 and if they do life will be much much harder. They're healthy, happy, mentally well - but with both political and literal climate going the way they are they can't see humanity realistically making it that far without some kind of mass war, famine, genocide, not to even mention untold horrors AI will usher in.
RHSman2 4y ago
I felt I had my first life crisis at 27. I felt older and that I should be doing less silly things. That led me to doing what I wanted as I couldn’t bare a life like that. P.s 46 now and coming into my 2nd adolescence
uonpopular_th 4y ago
I've been 50 since I was 12. I wonder what will happen when my body catches up with my age.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
Yeah I think I've been 40-50 since I was a teenager.
bigger_cheese 4y ago
I'm 38 I'd say I began to feel I was getting older in the last 5 years or so. I used to go out every Friday night and carry on into the long hours of the night. Nowadays by the time Friday comes around I'm completely exhausted. I've noticed it with sleep as well - these days if I stay up later than usual or I have a poor night of sleep I really feel it at work the next day. Lastly my metabolism has changed I've never really struggled with my weight but last 2 years or so I have begun putting on weight and for the first time in my life I am starting to develop a gut. I suspect some of it was due to pandemic and being less active than usual during that time but I really started to notice it towards the end of last year.
larati 4y ago
Way older. I can't imagine saying I feel 22. I am still in good shape pushing 50 but not like at 22. On the mental side though I was utterly clueless at 22. Pretty clueless at 40 even.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

"I'm a 30 year old boy.."

jacquesm 4y ago

"Inside every old person is a young person that wonders what the fuck happened".

homarp 4y ago
as illustrated by TikTok "teenage filter" - https://mobile.twitter.com/memotv/status/1628758590033993728 https://mobile.twitter.com/memotv/status/1628758590033993728
- wrycoder 4y ago
  LOL where are the old people?
dehrmann 4y ago
When we're young, the world is full of opportunities. As we get older, the doors to those opportunities close, and fewer things seem possible.
- uonpopular_th 4y ago
  Not really. There's just as many opportunities in every age, it's just that you've been burned enough times to realize that the majority of opportunities are nothing of the sort.
  - tenpies 4y ago
    I think the better example is that when you're young, the world hasn't sorted you into a bucket yet. Education, university, and your first jobs are largely that process: figuring out in which bucket you'll fit in society. When you're older, if you want to change buckets, there is no easy mechanism. Even going back to university is clunky. It's by no means impossible, but I do wonder if we're missing out as a society for not having a very formalized process for adults who want to change buckets later in life. The other problem is for lengthy training periods. Giving up 10 years for education and training when you're 20 is acceptable. When you're in your 30s or 40s, why that's a substantial amount of the time you have left before society decides you are old and must retire.

Tarsul 4y ago

it doesn't help that the dreams I have are also of yesteryear events.

thunderbong 4y ago

"The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is still young" - Oscar Wilde

Sai_ 4y ago
Someone should invent an Oscar Wilde quote generator like they did for Deepak Chopra. I’ve been guilty of using OW’s quotes but does the format have to be so predictable? “The <$5 word for an emotion> with/of <noun> is not that it <does a banal thing> but that <slightly offbeat insight>”. 1. The surprising thing about rain is not that it falls during your parade but that it never does when you have to attend someone else’s. 2. Some people read books to educate themselves, others to subjugate others. 3. I have nothing to declare but I’m too much of a genius to just “No” when asked. How did I do?
- uonpopular_th 4y ago
  1 and 2 are great, 3 isn't.
  - Sai_ 4y ago
    3. The difficulty with my genius is not that it’s there but that you don’t seem have any to recognise mine.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      I feel like it can be simplified, but it’s basically there :)

Scubabear68 4y ago

This does not feel surprising to me. I think you mentally lock into the age where you really bloomed into your adult self. For many, that is their early 20s. For me, it is around 30 (I am in my 50s). And then that perceived age very slowly drifts up, but still with considerable lag to “real” age.

pasquinelli 4y ago

you can't know how it feels to be older than you are, you can only know how it looks. from that you're free to guess how it feels, but you're probably wrong. me, i've felt 9 since i was 9. it's actually kind of weird, i remember waking up on the morning of my ninth birthday, and that's where my episodic memory begins. i have earlier memories, but they're outside of time.

pbj1968 4y ago

I feel every one of my years. A relative in her 90s used to joke that if you asked her, she was still 15 or 16. So it goes.

KarlKemp 4y ago
15 or 16 feels strange. Maybe the war years, or shortly before?
- pbj1968 4y ago
  Nailed it.

ordu 4y ago

I think the article gives us a very shallow take on a problem. The first question should be "what is an age perception". The article even calls this perception a bizarre thing (and I agree), but then it throws the question out of the window. Why people think it is a good idea to learn how to guess age? I think, it is because we need to guess age of others to fine tune our communication skills. If it is so, then probably we apply this very guessing abilities to ourselves and get the wrong answer. Which is not very surprising: we see ourselves differently, we see ourselves from the inside, so skills learned for measuring others do not do a great job. So there are some traits, that can be measured based on our appearance and behavior, that are used to predict age, but they looks completely different from the inside. What are they?

deleted 4y ago
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irrational 4y ago

After I turned 50 I mentioned to my Mom that I still felt like I was in my early 20s. She said she felt the exact same way, despite being in her 70s. That was the first time I realized that the discrepancy between how old you are and how old you think you are might be universal. It also made me wonder if this might be why surveys show that in general men prefer women who are in their early 20s. Perhaps men are basing it off of how old they feel (so they are the same age as the women they are seeking) rather than how old they are. Of course, the same surveys show that in general women prefer men near their own actual age. Perhaps women base it off of how old they are rather than how old the think they are. I have no idea if the above has any basis in reality. It’s just a “I wonder…”

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
I would assume it’s more of a biology thing because women under 30 are more fertile. We evolved to prefer those markers that signify that age. Of course not all men have this preference etc etc
- gabereiser 4y ago
  I completely agree but I also think it’s a little bit of ugg. Have you seen the people 40+ on dating apps or online? It’s definitely a flea market.
Hyption 4y ago
[flagged]

korroziya 4y ago

I figured this was going to be more about the Zoomers in their twenties who act like perpetual high school students. Did not expect to see the discrepancy between people with and without kids.

xyzelement 4y ago

I think this is just the aftermath (and also, ongoing) of boomer culture. Before that generation, you generally had kids in your late 20s and grandkids in your 50s. If you were 80, you were a great grandparent. All these titles conveyed an age. By the time you were those ages, you acted that age. Boomers I think invented the 40 is the new 30 and 70 is the new 50 nonsense, so of course they are confused about what age they are. It's easy to "feel 20" when you haven't taken on the appropriate responsibility. I am an example of that. I am 41, only married 3 years, to a younger woman and we have a baby and a toddler. Just bought a house etc. Very easy to feel young with all that, but the reality is I am more like "late to the party" - this all should have happened 10-14 years ago. I'd feel "older" if my kid was going into highschool rather than pre-school right now.

yencabulator 4y ago
Just so you know, "haven't taken on the appropriate responsibility" really sounds like you are judging people whose life choices differ from yours. Nobody has a responsibility to procreate.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I am talking about responsibility as in being responsible for people (spouse, kids, grandkids in this case.) It's easier to "feel young" when you don't have that.
  - BobbyJo 4y ago
    It's the "appropriate" that gives it the negative connotation. Maybe you meant "the responsibilities necessary to feel an age", but it came off as "the responsibilities you should have at an age".
    - xyzelement 4y ago
      Good clarification prompt, thank you. I meant the former definition but they are intertwined for me so it makes sense that it came out ambiguously. To elaborate: As I grow up, I see in myself and others a deeper life satisfaction from being parents/grandparents at "the appropriate age." This was not obvious to me when I was 20-30. So I don't mean for "appropriate" to suggest you owe it to anybody to reproduce, but I do believe that it's a path most likely to yield the most satisfaction for a typical person. (As an analogy, I can say the "appropriate" weight for a 6 ft tall man like me is 170-180LBs. That doesn't mean that I am obligated to lose 20LBs, just that my life would be better if I did)

thomastjeffery 4y ago

It seems to me that in constructing an answer to that question, we are weighing our social and developmental progress against the ages we generally associate to social and developmental milestones. It's a bit like asking someone how far they have walked today. They aren't going to go back and count the steps. Instead, they will consider what landmarks they passed, and what events they encountered, try to add them all together, and compare that sum against other distances traveled that they do have explicit measurements for. The length of a journey is most often described, not as an accounting of unit measure, but from weighing the complexity of the story one would tell about it. This kind of narrative measurement is already present in most of our conversations about age. What age do people learn to read, to swim, or to ride a bicycle? How old is a grandparent? Are you too late in life to start a family? When should a person begin retirement? All of those narratives set a rubric of expectations: a domain and scale for age itself. When we ask someone how old they "feel", we are intentionally vague. We are asking for the "age" that isn't defined by time. So a person constructs a new definition or of the narratives that are familiar to them, and tells us where they see themselves in that collection of narratives.

bilsbie 4y ago

I’m in my 40s and I still automatically get out of the public pool when they blow the whistle.

zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago

I'm 35. Really the only time I feel older than 20 is when I'm hungover. Never really got hangovers until I was in my late 20s

RHSman2 4y ago

Tendons. Once beautiful, stretchy creatures that probably now resemble a curmudgeon being asked to be nice to a neighbor. Been playing soccer with my soccer mad 8 yr old. I too was that guy. Brings me back and I am so much better at technique now but boy oh boy does my hip and lower back hurt the next day!!!

jacquesm 4y ago
There is a funny Dutch song called 'you're getting older dad' that has this passage in it: "I'm still winning at pong, but it costs him little trouble and me more and more..."
dehrmann 4y ago
> lower back hurt the next day "Next day" makes me think it's just DOMS.
- RHSman2 4y ago
  My MRI on my hip and lower lumbar would tell you other wise.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    Back MRIs are weird. You'll get people with herniated discs with no symptoms and people with clean MRIs in pain. And of course, people experiencing pain that the MRI finds the cause of. It's also possible to have two sources of pain. It could be DOMS plus a herniated disc. I'm mostly pointing this out because "back pain" has scary connotations, any sort of pain gets them worried, even if it's just DOMS.
    - RHSman2 4y ago
      It’s a inflamed joint creating sciatic nerve ‘irritation’ and Some disc compression. And some DOMS :)
rramadass 4y ago

ericol 4y ago

What's news, pussycat. If we talk about how I feel, I think I'll be forever 30; that was around the time in my life when I had the most friends, experienced the most, traveled the most and had the most fun. But then, last year I turned 50, and the realization that I have a lot more behind me than ahead is a thought that lives rent free in my mind now.

JALTU 4y ago
And for me, the rent ahead is not so "free!" Making money was ego and self-discovery when young. It's all-too-practical now with a degree of urgency I'd not ever felt before.
LBJsPNS 4y ago
"the realization that I have a lot more behind me than ahead is a thought that lives rent free in my head now" That's a limitation you placed on yourself. At 55 I divorced a lead weight and started investigating opportunities. At 67 I am doing more and accomplishing more of my own dreams than I ever have. Don't ever underestimate yourself or your options, no matter what your age.
- ericol 4y ago
  I guess it's never too late to divorce a lead weight. All in all, I'm happy for you.

erentz 4y ago

What would be the evolutionary conditions that would lead us to mentally think we are older as we age? For much of evolutionary history we were expected to produce offspring then kick the bucket. No advantage to feeling older, not even expected to get that much older than what most people feel. If we solved the problem of aging this wouldn’t be a puzzle at all and it would immediately make perfect sense. The age we feel we are would correspond roughly to the age we were fully developed (mid 20s) and the age our body would stay at without aging.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
It's almost certainly a mistake to think that every feature of a system subject to selection pressure is a result of that selection pressure. Most real world selection leaves plenty of room for features to emerge (or disappear) that don't change selection fitness.

cassonmars 4y ago

I wonder how much this schism exists in people who were near death in a “younger” age. I’ve had a couple of reminders of my mortality from my 20s to early 30s now and it’s firmly grounded a “now or never” mindset to getting things done, because nothing is guaranteed. In the same vein, I’m very continually aware of my age and am mindful of the statistically likely years I have left. Memento Mori.

bennyelv 4y ago
Interestingly, I’ve experienced exactly the same thing, but the outcome is that I care very little about what people think would be an “age appropriate” approach to life and just optimise for maximum fulfilment right now, whatever form that takes.

euroderf 4y ago

George Bernard Shaw: "Youth is wasted on the young."

electric_mayhem 4y ago

A mentor told me that he felt like he was about twenty until after his first heart attack and bypass surgery. After that, he said, he felt like he had aged a ton.

ipnon 4y ago
People take for granted the cardiac muscle dutifully pumping away oxygen and nutrients to each extremity. A weak heart makes it difficult to move, difficult to think. Once your heart deteriorates everything else quickly follows.

neilk 4y ago

I still feel like the upstart who barely knows what he is doing. The only difference is the people around me. I used to be surrounded by people I looked up to, who seemed to know everything. But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent and they're acting like I am the established authority, which just shows how little they must know!

PcChip 4y ago
I feel this, thought I was the only one
twiddling 4y ago
You realized that everyone else has been faking it too
skeeter2020 4y ago
Yes, I don't feel any smarter but I see others missing what I think are obvious observations and actions much more frequently. I'm also OK being the same fraud I've felt like since my 20's. Starting to be comfortable in my skin, I just wish it wasn't so wrinkly now that I can enjoy it.
sdwr 4y ago
Nice
Aeolun 4y ago
Haha, yeah. I absolutely recognice that. It’s really weird to imagine that some of the people I work with were babies when I left university.
moonchrome 4y ago
I don't get this TBH. I work with younger coworkers and I recognize them falling for similar traps I did years/decade ago. I don't see my coworkers getting less competent, I'm just aware that I did way more stupid shit than they did and have the benefit of experience.
- 4y ago

JALTU 4y ago

I wonder if others here found their mental age aging more rapidly after certain life events? The wake of aging parents transitioning (death, stroke/care home) has without doubt accelerated my mental age, which in turn has changed what I'd call my horizon. When younger and prior to said events, the horizon was far away; time enough for everything/anything. Not so much anymore, much greater sense of uncertainty.

hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
I feel that after kid was born. Chronic sleep deprivation and depression are the reasons. Not sure when will nd hopefully not too long.
- tenpies 4y ago
  I found depression to be a two-edged sword in the aging department. Mentally, I felt older, "an old soul". But physically, not having the energy to do anything, sleeping almost in excess, not going outside, not laughing or smiling . . . they all seem to have kept my body younger.
- adastra22 4y ago
  About 18 years.
  - hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
    Nooooooooooo!
    - adastra22 4y ago
      No seriously you get into huge groove after a while. But it’s never back to the life you had before.
incanus77 4y ago
Feels so for me. I'm nearing 46, and all through my 30s I felt (and was told) that I seemed younger. My wife passed from cancer when I was 39 and I feel like all that time caught up to me in the next year or so. Now I feel (and I think, look) age-appropriate, have begun to definitely feel the aging. However, I've also made more serious efforts towards good nutrition and exercise and am feeling much healthier than other periods of my life. But mentally, I'm incredibly presently aware of every day and how uncertain any future days with anyone, let alone myself, actually are.

yawgmoth 4y ago

Curious how old other formerly closeted queer folks feel (particularly those who came out as adults). I have felt 30 since I hit puberty. I imagine it's from being hyper vigilant about policing my own behavior and body language.

mrbabbage 4y ago
As someone who came out at 18 (technically an adult), both: - younger—I had a vastly accelerated "social puberty" bc I started so much later than most folks. - older—for the reason you mentioned. - but now younger again—I don't feel the same pressure to have biokids, and thus not beholden to the "biological clock" that forces birthing parents to start families in their 30s. I'm 32 and just went back to school, because why not! Plus, the pressure of the white gay dating scene forces me to take better care of myself (sleep, diet, exercise), which also make me feel younger.
notahacker 4y ago
Think I've generally been 19 since the age of 19. Mostly to do with energy and uncertainty about life direction that has nothing to do with sexuality, but most friends my age have kids... In my earlier teens I might have been able to sound like a young adult talking about something like politics, but if anything I was all the more early teenager in terms of uncertainty over sexuality and how people would react.
omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
That sounds right. I feel similarly for different reasons (have to be vigilant and police my own behavior because of health issues).
frimsah 4y ago
I think you're on to something with the expanded self-consciousness that comes with always monitoring your own behavior/body language at the onset of puberty. I think there are other situations where a young person would also develop this kind of hyper vigilance. For me it's always made me feel older than my peers like you say.

slowhadoken 4y ago

It’s not uncommon for me to be in a conversation with someone in their 30’s or 40’s and they think I’m younger than them. I still get hit on by 18, 19, and 20 year olds. I’m not interested but it’s flattering. Perspective and attitude go a long way.

oh_sigh 4y ago
Same here. I think it's negatively affected my career prospects too, not that I care too much about that. Never thought it would be advantageous to be a schlubby balding guy, but I saw someone start the same day as me get way more respect immediately despite me being pretty clearly more technically competent than him. Maybe he was schmoozing behind the scenes, I don't know.

majkinetor 4y ago

I don't feel age. I don't care. 20 or 80, its all the same to me.

cwp 4y ago

I've had this basically my whole life. I used to joke that I was 16 going on 30 and everybody knew what I meant. Now it's going the other way. Also, I have this for other people. I still think of my brother as 23, and I have to do math to figure out how old he really is.

globalise83 4y ago

I am in the interesting position of being close to 40 and only just in the past year becoming able to grow a proper beard. So, I consider myself a slightly cleaner-living 18 year old.

thriftwy 4y ago

I never had any problem with my age, but. This year I've turned 38 and for some reason this number stopped being funny. I know a lot people make a fuss about turning 40, but for me the transition happened to be 38.

cm2012 4y ago
Passing actual middle age based on life expectancy!

nl 4y ago

One "interesting" thing about aging as a guy is that male pattern baldness starts at the back of the head where it's really difficult to see on yourself. I didn't really realize how much hair I'd lost until I saw a random photo of a crowd of people with me in it with my back to the camera. That was quite a surprise.

nl 4y ago

Link to "people feel 20% younger paper": https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03193996.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03193996.pdf The curves really are very good!

shynrou 4y ago

Feels weird reading of all these same experiences. Since my childhood I always felt older than I was. Any body got a similar experience?

sdwr 4y ago
I wanted to be (?) an old man sometimes as a kid, and would walk around pretending to have arthritic joints.
Aeolun 4y ago
Sort of? I felt like I always hung out with people older than me, but recently it’s inverted.
frimsah 4y ago
Yeah for a few years I thought I was actually +2 older than I was. This started to happen after some major life events that threw everything I knew into question. Since that happened I've found it difficult (or boring) to relate to people who are younger than me. Most of my friends are older.

tmtvl 4y ago

I am 33 yet feel mentally like an 80 year old dementia patient. Physically I'm fine, I can do kip ups all day long, but I feel like I have forgotten more than I can ever hope to relearn.

skeeter2020 4y ago
Near 50 and the exact opposite. Mentally I'm sharper than ever (low bar) but physically starting to feel old. I still have some fairly aggressive physical ambitions but wondering if I've got what it takes to accomplish them. 30's through mid 40's was the best physical segment of my life.
Aeolun 4y ago
I feel like this is because it’s the first time any signs of age start to show. I’m 35 and my body just doesn’t like the things I did with it even 10 years ago. Half of my beard is gray. I feel like this is something that should happen to other ‘older’ people.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  35 was when I first started needing naps after the lunch at work. That's when I realized I need to save enough money by 50 to retire from my programming job, and I did.

DataJunkie 4y ago

I am in my late 30s. I feel like after the pandemic I started visually aging. Part of the problem was that I lost a lot of weight at the same time, so I do actually look a bit different. People tell me I am crazy. I feel like my hair is receding though nobody notices it and in photos it really looks the same for the past 10 years. I feel like there is me at my age, there is some illusion of me at my age, and me at the age I feel. I feel young. On average, I feel about 25 mentally and maybe 30 physically, but sometimes I feel like I am stuck as a precocious 15 year old. I have a silly sense of humor. I feel like as my numerical age increases, the more I am expected to be boring and not be myself anymore. Quite frankly, it's led me into a depression.

racked 4y ago
Don't worry so much about it. Really. Stop worrying. Allow it to just be and surround you as a fact of life.

fernly 4y ago

Actually turning 80 caused a mental shift. I'd be doing something and think, wait, should an 80-year-old be doing this? Something about the number made my mental age repeatedly try to re-align with the physical. The effect lasted a few days then faded.

wrycoder 4y ago
Yeah, I'm 80 and feel about 40. I'm a little slower, that's all. Sometimes, I'll be walking past a shop window and say, "Who's that old dude?"
- XorNot 4y ago
  If I'm can be 80 and feel no older then 40 (which is...christ, 3 years away) then I would call that an absolute win. So you're clearly doing a lot right.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  That’s nice though. Until I was like 30 years of age I felt like a child compared to all the ‘adults’ around me, but now I just feel like everyone from 30-100 is more or less the same, just at different stages of life.
- alchemist1e9 4y ago
  That is pretty neat. How is coding at 80? I’m in late 40s and I’m hoping coding is something that can stick with you, I’ve read it definitely can.
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    It's a lot of fun. I'm back to my old interest - small systems programming on the bare metal. I did Nand2Tetris several years ago, and now I'm following the work of people like Tunney and DeVault as they bootstrap de novo. 100rabbits is also fascinating. I'm working on an electronics program for the local makerspace - some combination of ham radio topics, microcontrollers and sensors - trying to figure out some good projects that can pull those fields together and get the younger crowd to realize they are carrying four microwave radios and a supercomputer in their pockets and that they ought to be interested in rf electronics. Trying to get the makerspace off of Google Docs, Photoshop, Twitter, and other proprietary software and onto FOSS hardware and software is really an uphill battle. It's so convenient.

garrisonj 4y ago

There is an asymmetry here, because, for the most part, you can’t know what it feels like to be an age until you’ve been it. So it will be more common to feel your age or younger because that's what you've experienced. If you feel worn out when you are 25, you just think that’s what being 25 feels like.

Barrin92 4y ago

I think a lot of it has to do with the quite heavy expectations that historically came with age and the demand to conform in a certain way. For example you see a lot of people today who grew up on the internet and are now into their 40s say "I'm too old for this, I shouldn't enjoy this as much" etc. The expectation to behave a certain way and what people really want creates a sort of mismatch. And really it's kind of silly because when someone is 50 and says they feel like they're 35 that's probably because there's really not that much of a difference. Their brain just works all the same. The reverse is true as well I think. A lot of kids 'feel older' in their head than they are and that's probably just because they're not as different as we treat them. That we treat older and younger people like different species sometimes has always been weird to me.

ggm 4y ago

The most apt song for this situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdMWHB6Kz3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdMWHB6Kz3A

maerF0x0 4y ago

I feel about 60 after leg day. I feel about 20 whenever I get on my motorcycle or around a pretty girl I know I'm exactly my age by what time I go to bed.

SunghoYahng 4y ago

Actually, I'm a trans-age (you know, years are biological and ages are social). There is always a mismatch between my biological years and the age of my soul. So I identified myself as a guy whoes age is 20.

paulpauper 4y ago

You know you are getting old when you're older than athletes, entertainers, etc.

foogazi 4y ago

Years ago I asked my then 95yo late grandmother how old she felt in her mind and she said 17 I keep that in mind when I look at old people, just trapped in an old body

exabrial 4y ago

I feel like I'm 28. Until I go riding with someone that's 28, then I'm quickly reminded I'm far older.

cm2012 4y ago

I'm 32 and that feels about right to me. I don't think I've ever felt a mismatch.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Interesting that this article popped up not too long after the discussion about the TikTok "teen" filter, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34918735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34918735. The top comment on that post is "As a GenX who played with that filter yesterday, I don't understand why anyone's reaction would be to cry." Well, this is certainly one reason why.

abalashov 4y ago

I was moderately precocious in my programming and in my career, though probably not terribly so by the standards of this crowd. I got started in C when I was 9 or 10, and ran Linux on the desktop from 6th grade onward, hacked on device drivers and the like in my middle and high school years, that kind of stuff. I had a relatively "meteoric" early career before going out on my own, going through 6 jobs between age 18 and 22, in some cases doubling my income as I went. I was the chief sysadmin of a small local ISP at 19 (which says more about the ISP), and I was holding fairly serious senior titles at more serious companies in the big city by age 21 or so, making more than my dad at the time, who was a professor. (The consequences of being this young and stupid with this much money are a grim topic for another day.) Anyway, the main age-related shift I've experienced is that the socio-professional aura of my skills and experience went from "holy crap, he's 20 year-old wunderkind" to just kind of table stakes. Nobody's really shocked that mid-30s me is pretty good at what I do and have a lot of experience doing it, and it hasn't been a shock in quite a while. Sure, I'm a lot more credible now as a self-employed consultant than I was at, say, 23, but younger me was a bit of a primadonna and had a big head because I front-loaded so much of the career development and climbing the ladder, at least as engineering per se goes. In these settings, lots of older people resent you (for reasons I find very justifiable in hindsight), but plenty of people pat you on the head along the way, too. I'm not praise-dependent in any extraordinary way, I'd like to think, but anyone can be habituated to something pleasant and can it be a bit of a jolt to feel the tide going out. In addition to undergoing the normal humbling that comes with getting older and realising you're not as brilliant as everyone around you leads you to believe, people also stop telling you you're brilliant to begin with. :-)

ekanes 4y ago

Something I've found useful is the idea that you are as old as your spine feels. Seems quite true, at least to me, as both diagnostic and prescription. :)

helsinkiandrew 4y ago

https://archive.ph/nC2bL https://archive.ph/nC2bL

simonblack 4y ago

I've felt about 22 for decades. Probably until my mid forties, I felt I was only about 19. That leads quite often to the situation where you are looking in shock at some elderly, bald person in the mirror while thinking "Who's that old bastard?". Or the sudden realisation "My God! I'm only two and a bit years off 80!" As the article says, there's a difference between the age you feel you are 'in your head' and the age you feel you are 'in your body'. This also is rather annoying as your 'head' feels you can knock over a job completely in an hour or two but when you start doing it, your 'body' lets you down and and you find yourself exhausted about four hours later and stop working, only about a quarter-way through the job.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn 4y ago
Categorising ideas as age specific makes sense. We think differently as we get older, our mind is slower, our ideas change. Categorising the body according to how 'old' it is or feels or looks also makes sense. Categorising consciousness in the same way makes no sense at all, consciousness feels the same from as soon as you are aware of it until the moment you are unaware of it (usually death). The confusion often arises in conflating consciousness with the body or the mind or both.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Hmm, my conciousness now feels significantly different from before. Not necessarily saying it is different, but I experience life differently from when I was 12.
foobiekr 4y ago
Same. Once I started seriously considering retirement, admittedly a bit early-ish relative to the usual 65-70, the internal mental model of self has started to shift pretty dramatically, and the hypothetical "I have a lot of things i want to do" plans for the future now have the annotation "and a lot of them need to be done while I am still relatively young enough for them to be plausible." That has honestly shifted the self-perception pretty dramatically. Or maybe I have the cause and effect reversed.