What has been the biggest surprise about getting older?

I think it's that you don't feel older mentally. I though I would feel a certain maturity once I reached an age where I had a solid, advancing career and owned a house. Turns out, I feel pretty much the same and am just better at dealing with things that arise and pretending that I'm mature. My body hurts more and my face looks older, but I don't feel all that different. I'm sure I've mentally changed to some extent, and I notice it more when I talk to younger people, but I still feel the same.

This hit me more than a decade ago but the realization that nobody really knows what they're doing. Most people wing it their entire lives.

How fast time passes. Years pass very quickly now and the view of the end is approaching faster than I would like.

Mentally, I still feel like I am the same person as back when I was a teenager, until I actually meet some real teenagers and thought "oh, they are a bunch of children.", and then "wait, was I actually as immature as them when I was a teen? That's not the way I remembered it."

The toll of core life events. Having a child, taking care of elderly grandparents/parents. I thought it would be easier. Not easy but "he's not heavy; he's my brother" kind of easier. Maybe it's me, but it feels like I'm constantly running on empty. Caregiver burnout is a real beast.

Each additional decade of age seems half as long as the previous one was.

0-10 took forever

10-20 took 20 years

20-30 took 10 years

30-40 took 5 years

I'm 40 and it feels like 50 is next year already.

The amount of pure bullshit I have to go through every day just for an hour of enjoyment in the evenings.

I think seeing how fast many people turn into people they would not have liked when they were younger. It's probably part of growing up but many people seem to not remember what they wanted to do better than their parents.

How "not old" everything is. I'm not old, but when I was young I thought people my age were at the general end of one's life. People also are surprisingly clueless.

How much disdain I have for change (“they are just making it worse!”) aka grumpy old man syndrome

I've only gotten MORE healthy and strong.

My sex drive hasn't gone down like media tells me

Retirement is a fantasy

When I look at homeless people I think 'that could be me in 4 months if I miss 2 weeks of work.

That i succeeded in raising my children much better than my parents raised me. As a result, my now adult kids are happy, compassionate, have a good life, and they really love me :-)

I’m just tired man.

Increasingly getting the “I don’t give a single fuck” superpower.

The thought of dying gains more optimism because you get more and more fatigued by people and their bullshit. The toxicity, self-entitlment, tribalism, narcissism, hate... There's enough of them out there to just ruin it all enough that it gets exhausting and saddening. I figure by my old age, I'll be happy with checking out.

If there's an afterlife and it has to be shared with people of Earth again, I'll be so pissed off.

How much older people "don't know fuck about fuck".

As youngling I thought elder know something and I believed them.

Now I know they didn't know anything, same as me and my friends don't.

How much everything still hurts. Physically, emotionally, everything. How much I hate that I'm still trucking away, trying to do the right thing.

And it's so lonely.

When I was a kid I thought adults knew stuff and had life figured out. I grew up to realize that no one knows shit.

The fact that I continue to grow older. I've had multiple horrifically potentially fatal health issues that should have killed me decades ago but I'm still here and somehow healthier. Wtf.

It turned out that I couldn’t be or do anything I wanted after all. All that money I earn goes to other people.

Mid-shaft hairs.

How much more slowly injuries heal. Get a cut on your hand? That'll take two weeks to heal. Catch a cold and you're down for a solid week. I'm only in my 30's but I feel like a decade ago it would have only taken a few days to recover from a minor injury or illness.

Edit: Thanks for the concern guys. I really do appreciate it. I get checked out fairly regularly. "Two weeks" is probably an exaggeration. I just mean it takes longer than it used to.

How many people actively vote and influence against their own self-interest

I was very surprised to find that I feel more calm, more balanced, more confident and true to myself, less worrisome and controlling, and just generally happier with every passing year.

I've had a very sharp mind, but I must confess I've noticed it slowing a little in the last few years. One of the mysterious benefits of that is now it causes me to reflect for just an extra moment before I respond. That has opened up so many more lines of communication and understanding in my personal relationships.

I didn't realize how much younger women would love older guys with some grey. I didn't realize how many women thought going unshaven and looking like a bag of shit (joking here but not)... was incredibly sexy.

I got a lot of experience seeing relationships all around me, and my own. And I came to discover some things about how we work inside. Majority of people never figure it out, but a lot of people do around 40. I found it very refreshing and surprising to see that within others, and it was a really cool light bulb going off for me when I got it.

I was super surprised to find out that despite my thrashing, really mostly my life was a series of random events or unlikely confluences. That is to say, through experience and reflection, I discovered that we really have far less influence in our own lives than we think. This goes for the high points and the low points.

I was really shocked actually to see how little emotional maturation there generally was as I watched my peers age alongside me. I know people who are in their 50s and 60s who do nothing except gossip in a sinister way about everybody and stir up shit. I am aware of a group of 50-year-old women wherein a marketing director got into a spat with 3 other women over a man at our social group, which ended with slashing tires. I really, really did not expect to see this kind of insanity at my age. And it still surprises me every time I see it, I must be naive at this point for giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I'm very surprised how quickly life changed from being so bored you purposely extend a poop from 2 minutes to 20 while you read the shampoo bottle for the 50th time... To the point where there isn't a single second in our day where interaction isn't available! We wouldn't miss a phone call for the world in the '70s-90s even if it meant jumping off the garage roof in the middle of reshingling to answer in time. I'm surprised at how bored I feel with more media to consume than ever before.

How often I need to get up at night to pee.

It gets worse every family member you lose... You don't get used to it. It just gets worse and worse.

That I just keep getting older. I kind of expected a bunch of life events into my mid thirties, but I was pretty hazy about everything after that. Now here I am, getting older, not really sure what to do.

That I started to not care about latest tech gadgets, and I just want to use old reliable ones that just work for my use cases. In fact I still don't understand the point of tablets, except some rare use cases, and I still prefer my desktop computer to anything else.

How quickly I have fallen behind in knowledge of technology and slang.

everything hurts.

The immense shock of realizing that I am realistically over a third of the way through my life.

How quickly the second half of my life has gone..i guess it has been filled with more variety and more going on. Could be the monotony of it all too that it all blends in. It's bonkers how quick things pass. I mean, COVID started 4 years ago..where has that gone! I have a 15yo son! l still feel like I'm 21 ..but with less-than-ideal moving body parts. My knees, no pain, just don't move like they used to. I wish I could do half the things i see some 50 year olds doing in the movies..jumping over fences like I used to as a teen..and and and

The joint pain.

You realize how some people never grow up and some people never mature. I see these as two separate entities. Having an inner child is one thing, but being completely disrespectful to others like a 5 y/o as a grown person is something else entirely

The fucking hair.

How quick your body wears out. I'm only 41 and my body is already used up. It is going to be hell for 30yrs from now on.

That I still mentally think and feel like I’m 20+ years younger but my body and people around me won’t let me act like it.

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I haven't really changed much as a person. I'm still the same dork I was in my 20.

Everyone my age is angry about something that happened two decades ago and is working off a mental life story that "explains" why they are doing awful things. As if they get angry enough or disagree enough it can somehow backwards correct the unfixable.

I find it surprising that conversations and interactions with my cohort are basically an eternal thanksgiving dinner without the food or happiness. People are reduced to sore points, don't mention x, don't talk about anything related to x, whatever you do dont downplay x. They will demand you take a side about x.

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One day you think you have 0 responsibilities and tomorrow you discover that you actually had a lot of stuff to be done, but it's impossible to finish them because today's things are piling up already.

My joints hurt. I'm around 30, and I beat the shit out of my body through my late teens-mid twenties. My joints feel like they're about 20 years older than the rest of me some days. Fun experiences for the most part, but I'm paying for those minor injuries piling up over the years.

How it makes me understand more and more of my parents' actions and opinions that I questioned or condemned when I was younger. So maybe even...becoming more conservative in a way.

How much shit I've had wrong with me this entire time that I didn't realize was happening because it wasn't as bad and I was young

Blood in poop?

The fact that history gets shorter as I get older

Your actions, whether good or bad, will eventually affect you. Luck, which is defined as the factors that are beyond your control, such as genetics, family upbringing, and place of birth, is a major determining factor in life.

Younger women drooling.

I'm a grey fox, eheh

farts

'scuse me