5 ms·

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 sho

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.
- simonblack 4y ago
  "I have a lot of things i want to do and a lot of them need to be done while I am still relatively young enough for them to be plausible." Do those things that are 'on your list' as soon as possible. There is an old saying 'Life is what happens while you're making other plans'. I discovered that I had, in practice, a mere six (6!) years in retrospect where it was possible do do things that were 'on MY list. If you miss that window of opportunity, you'll never get to do your list at all. You have to make to effort to fit them in while you can. One of my lifelong dreams was to spend a year or two in a small village in France. The first time it was a possibility was in 2003, but 'No, I have the responsibility to make us a living' meant that that chance was lost and so eight years went by - lost opportunity - until I finally made it to my village in France in 2011 but by then I could only spend time there in bits and pieces rather than as a single block of time. My "window of opportunity" closed at the end of 2016, though I wasn't aware of that fact till about 3 years later. Many times I have said to my wife, "If only we were 10 years younger, we could have ... bought an apartment in Paris ... or a house in Italy, or .......". Lost opportunities by the score.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    If you were 10 years younger you might not have had the means to do that?
    - simonblack 4y ago
      That is true in theory, but if you really want to do something, you will find a way. (And strangely enough, for some reason, the Universe will assist you.) I once was working only part-time but I made it a goal to get to "Paris in April". That was 29 years ago. I can't remember now how we managed it, but somehow or other, we achieved that 'Paris in April' as part of a six-week round-the-world trip. About 3 years after that, some friends invited us to spend a few weeks in Spain in their time-share holiday. We didn't have the money. They said 'Put it on the card'. So we did. Several months later, I received a very rare Tax Refund which allowed us to pay the credit card off. Twelve months later, the tax man took all the refund and more, back off me. So I sometimes say "The Tax Department lent us the money to go to Spain. We'd never have been able to that, otherwise."
crdrost 4y ago
Jukebox the Ghost in 2012, In my lungs I still feel young But my body won't play along I'm thinking this must not be where we Belong. Alan Kay was talking somewhere, but I don't have the link, about how a lot of his success in his youth had to do with the research community around him, and I think he was asked a question about how that sort of thing changes as you grow older... He replied that the combination of growing older and not having that generous funding for whatever experiments they wanted to do and the dynamic research community, meant that he had to stop looking for validation at the "quality of my results" and instead had to feel pride at the "quality of my effort." Something I have kept in mind. The other thing I will say is that I am getting to an age where a lot of people really get set in their ways, and I am noticing that I am not. Like on a recent project I was trying to get team buy-in to move from Java to Kotlin, and the people who were super excited about it were 5-10 years younger and the people who were like “but why” were my generation and carried the day. I told this struggle to my wife and she attributed it to neurodivergence, she thinks I might have a mild or high-functioning ADHD that essentially gives me perpetual mid-to-late 20s enthusiasm with sime mild drawbacks (difficulty “cleaning as I go” when cooking for example, not handling the taxes until April when it becomes urgent, that sort of thing).
- gnz11 4y ago
  In general (nothing against Kotlin) I think it probably has to do with the prospect of having to fiddle about and work late with new tech for the same outcome as what you would have gotten with the tried and true tech. At the end of the day, I want to spend my time with my friends and family and not burning the midnight hours on work tasks that could have been avoided.
  - hellisothers 4y ago
    This resonates but also essentially agrees w/the parent, the youth want to do what you just described for various reasons that benefit the youth, the older peeps didn’t, because of similar motivations.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    In my personal experience working with Kotlin saves you half the time on typing alone.
incompatible 4y ago
What does it mean to "feel about 22"? I don't feel like any particular age. I know what my age is, from subtracting my date of birth from the current date, and I don't see how it could be anything else. Edit: I suppose I feel now much the same as when I was actually 22, but all that suggests is that there isn't any "age feeling".
- fishtacos 4y ago
  About to turn 40 here, for context. In my early 20s I worked with a fellow who was 60 yo. Something I'll never forget was when he told me, while in a relatively introspective conversation during down time at work, that he doesn't recognize who he is when he looks in the mirror. Internally, as he said, he felt the same as he always did. Now, granted, this was a 4-times divorced, 5 times married ex-hippie and proud ex-80s coke-head fully bald man exhibiting light tremors, so there may have been other issues involved, but as I cross the threshold of another decade, can't help but think of what he said. Much like you, I don't feel much of a change, but I also feel very lucky because of that. Not sure if I'm aging well or if I'm accepting aging well, but then again I'm only turning 40. If I'm lucky enough, there'll be a ton more to lament in the future.
- simonblack 4y ago
  What does it mean to "feel about 22"? I suppose, like you, that I feel no differently now than I felt at 22, so in a sense, I reckon I have stayed at 22 'in my head'. But that is why it is a shock at times to look in the mirror and see somebody who doesn't at all look like I looked at 22.
- btbuildem 4y ago
  I think it means to feel like you belong in that age range - consider the activities, the interests, the associations a 22 yr old is likely to have. Daily routines, accomplishments, responsibilities, goals, etc.

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.

simonblack 4y ago
"I have a lot of things i want to do and a lot of them need to be done while I am still relatively young enough for them to be plausible." Do those things that are 'on your list' as soon as possible. There is an old saying 'Life is what happens while you're making other plans'. I discovered that I had, in practice, a mere six (6!) years in retrospect where it was possible do do things that were 'on MY list. If you miss that window of opportunity, you'll never get to do your list at all. You have to make to effort to fit them in while you can. One of my lifelong dreams was to spend a year or two in a small village in France. The first time it was a possibility was in 2003, but 'No, I have the responsibility to make us a living' meant that that chance was lost and so eight years went by - lost opportunity - until I finally made it to my village in France in 2011 but by then I could only spend time there in bits and pieces rather than as a single block of time. My "window of opportunity" closed at the end of 2016, though I wasn't aware of that fact till about 3 years later. Many times I have said to my wife, "If only we were 10 years younger, we could have ... bought an apartment in Paris ... or a house in Italy, or .......". Lost opportunities by the score.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  If you were 10 years younger you might not have had the means to do that?
  - simonblack 4y ago
    That is true in theory, but if you really want to do something, you will find a way. (And strangely enough, for some reason, the Universe will assist you.) I once was working only part-time but I made it a goal to get to "Paris in April". That was 29 years ago. I can't remember now how we managed it, but somehow or other, we achieved that 'Paris in April' as part of a six-week round-the-world trip. About 3 years after that, some friends invited us to spend a few weeks in Spain in their time-share holiday. We didn't have the money. They said 'Put it on the card'. So we did. Several months later, I received a very rare Tax Refund which allowed us to pay the credit card off. Twelve months later, the tax man took all the refund and more, back off me. So I sometimes say "The Tax Department lent us the money to go to Spain. We'd never have been able to that, otherwise."

crdrost 4y ago

Jukebox the Ghost in 2012, In my lungs I still feel young But my body won't play along I'm thinking this must not be where we Belong. Alan Kay was talking somewhere, but I don't have the link, about how a lot of his success in his youth had to do with the research community around him, and I think he was asked a question about how that sort of thing changes as you grow older... He replied that the combination of growing older and not having that generous funding for whatever experiments they wanted to do and the dynamic research community, meant that he had to stop looking for validation at the "quality of my results" and instead had to feel pride at the "quality of my effort." Something I have kept in mind. The other thing I will say is that I am getting to an age where a lot of people really get set in their ways, and I am noticing that I am not. Like on a recent project I was trying to get team buy-in to move from Java to Kotlin, and the people who were super excited about it were 5-10 years younger and the people who were like “but why” were my generation and carried the day. I told this struggle to my wife and she attributed it to neurodivergence, she thinks I might have a mild or high-functioning ADHD that essentially gives me perpetual mid-to-late 20s enthusiasm with sime mild drawbacks (difficulty “cleaning as I go” when cooking for example, not handling the taxes until April when it becomes urgent, that sort of thing).

gnz11 4y ago
In general (nothing against Kotlin) I think it probably has to do with the prospect of having to fiddle about and work late with new tech for the same outcome as what you would have gotten with the tried and true tech. At the end of the day, I want to spend my time with my friends and family and not burning the midnight hours on work tasks that could have been avoided.
- hellisothers 4y ago
  This resonates but also essentially agrees w/the parent, the youth want to do what you just described for various reasons that benefit the youth, the older peeps didn’t, because of similar motivations.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  In my personal experience working with Kotlin saves you half the time on typing alone.

incompatible 4y ago

What does it mean to "feel about 22"? I don't feel like any particular age. I know what my age is, from subtracting my date of birth from the current date, and I don't see how it could be anything else. Edit: I suppose I feel now much the same as when I was actually 22, but all that suggests is that there isn't any "age feeling".

fishtacos 4y ago
About to turn 40 here, for context. In my early 20s I worked with a fellow who was 60 yo. Something I'll never forget was when he told me, while in a relatively introspective conversation during down time at work, that he doesn't recognize who he is when he looks in the mirror. Internally, as he said, he felt the same as he always did. Now, granted, this was a 4-times divorced, 5 times married ex-hippie and proud ex-80s coke-head fully bald man exhibiting light tremors, so there may have been other issues involved, but as I cross the threshold of another decade, can't help but think of what he said. Much like you, I don't feel much of a change, but I also feel very lucky because of that. Not sure if I'm aging well or if I'm accepting aging well, but then again I'm only turning 40. If I'm lucky enough, there'll be a ton more to lament in the future.
simonblack 4y ago
What does it mean to "feel about 22"? I suppose, like you, that I feel no differently now than I felt at 22, so in a sense, I reckon I have stayed at 22 'in my head'. But that is why it is a shock at times to look in the mirror and see somebody who doesn't at all look like I looked at 22.
btbuildem 4y ago
I think it means to feel like you belong in that age range - consider the activities, the interests, the associations a 22 yr old is likely to have. Daily routines, accomplishments, responsibilities, goals, etc.