
Thoughts on Growing Old - bennesvig
http://nerdyfool.blogspot.com/2011/01/thoughts-on-growing-old.html
======
jaysonelliot
Other than the potential of things yet undone and the ability to eat whatever
I liked without gaining weight, there's not a hell of a lot I would want back
from my 20s.

I love getting older. I always tell people that I don't think of birthdays as
getting a year older, I think of them as leveling up.

I'm level 41 now, and I hope to earn enough experience points to make it all
the way to level 80, or even level 90 one day.

Sure, I can't run quite as fast, but I still try to run. What's best, though,
is that I get all the increased abilities that come from leveling up. More
wisdom, more knowledge, more credibility, and maybe even a bigger kingdom if I
do things well.

When I was 21, everything was hard. Talking to new people was hard, getting a
job was hard, even getting taken seriously was hard. I paid those dues
already, I have no interest in going backwards. I'd rather keep leveling up.

~~~
Spearchucker
I'm also 41. The part I love most is that age and treachery own youth and
enthusiasm.

Jokes aside, I've managed to live all of my life day by day, in the moment. I
see many who don't, so I'm grateful. My code only ever gets better. And I do
Krav Maga three times a week, so am as fit today as I was during the bush war
in Angola in 1989.

Another cool thing about age is that it's inversely proportional to giving a
shit.

~~~
itmag
Tell me more about the bush war, sounds interesting.

~~~
Spearchucker
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Border_War>

TLDR - it provided the cold-war-era US and USSR an opportunity to fight a real
war by proxy, at a time where they couldn't be seen to be fighting a real war.

~~~
itmag
Yeah, but I meant your part in it.

~~~
Spearchucker
No great shakes. Mostly COIN. When I wasn't tracking I was sitting in a bunker
getting stoned.

~~~
itmag
Dude. Can I contact you somehow? I run a magazine y'know... :)

~~~
Spearchucker
<http://www.wittenburg.co.uk>

------
gxs
>>Why is it so bad to get old? Why do people try to avoid it so much?
Personally, apart from having a slower metabolism and a back that aches a lot
more than it used it, I don't mind being old. In fact, I like it. I was really
stupid when I was young. And I'm still stupid. But I'm LESS stupid now. And I
wouldn't want to be that younger person again.

I'm 27. Why? I personally just miss the feeling of having it all in front of
you. Pft, a doctor? I can do that. A pro athlete? It's possible. Senator? I
can do that. However unlikely those may have been from the beginning, they
were at least possible. They definitely become less likely as you get older.

The only thing about growing old that makes me uneasy is seeing opportunities
close. Sure, new ones open up, but seeing old ones close still hurts.

I guess also, certain things are experienced a certain way only the first
time. The elation I felt the first time I was in live was absolutely crazy - I
loved every bit of it.

Other than that, I agree with OP - it's very nice being less stupid. It does,
however, rob life of suspense a bit as experience teaches you to expect a lot
of things.

~~~
pyre

      > seeing old ones close still hurts
    

If you view it as 'leveling up' like others have mentioned, then you could
just view this as a branching upgrade system where some choices preclude
others.

~~~
jlarocco
Yeah, but that's where the analogy breaks down. If you screw up in a game, you
can always start from scratch and choose better next time. Not really possible
in real life.

------
ebbv
Rather than denying that being old is a real thing, and that there are
downsides to it, I like to try to identify what those possible problems of
aging are and address the ones I can.

Decrepitude I address by running regularly and trying to curb my over-eating.
It's a cliche but I really am in better shape at 33 than I was in my 20's.
This is mostly because I didn't take care of myself at all until I was 30, but
most people can improve their eating and exercise habits.

Another problem is your mind and/or memory fading. Well it's been shown that
this can be staved off by playing games and staying mentally challenged. As a
developer this isn't a problem so far, I still play games every day.

What about social isolation, and losing friends and family until you're alone?
I've always been a bit of a curmudgeon, so this is one I need to watch out
for. I have to make sure to maintain a healthy group of friends as I get
older. So far, so good. It helps that I have a lot of younger siblings, and
it's unlikely they'll all die before me.

How about getting out of touch with modern society, arts and music? I don't
like Lady Gaga or Nicki Minaj, but there's still new bands and new albums
coming out that I do enjoy, and I stay aware of even the things I don't like
and can understand why other people do. I may shake my fist and say "You kids
today have no taste!" but at least I know why it is that I feel that way, and
there's never been a time where I liked _all_ new music anyway. Same goes for
movies and TV.

It also goes for technology; I don't cling tightly to the tools I use today or
used yesterday. I keep abreast of new technology and am ready to move to new
platforms, languages, etc. when something better comes along. I'm not going to
be caught with an obsolete skill-set because even for things I don't use every
day at work (Ruby, Node.js), I stay at least familiar with them. And this is
easier and easier to do the more disparate technologies you have under your
belt.

So yeah, aging is a thing that can suck. But you can do what you can to
minimize the bad parts.

And there's still more good than bad if you're doing what you want in an
environment that rewards you.

~~~
_feda_
That old adage that you can stave off memory loss and general degeneration of
cognitive ability by keeping your mind active always seems strikingly obvious
to me, and I think it's pretty much true for people at any age. And anyway,
what the heck are you doing if you're not keeping your mind active anyway?
Watching paint dry ;-)

~~~
bryanlarsen
As far as I'm aware, to stave off cognitive decay you need to keep your mind
active in ways that are different from the way you usually keep it active.
Studies show that sudoku prevents brain decay, but only in people who don't
play sudoku or games like it.

So if you're a programmer, learning new programming skills might help your
career but it probably won't help your brain. Learn a new language or a
musical instrument or something else completely different.

------
the_cat_kittles
Aging is a much easier pill to swallow for nerdy guys- you get smarter as you
age, and dont get that much worse looking, at least for a while. For athletes,
models etc, your raison d'etre might not have anything to do with intellect or
wisdom. Its got to be tougher in that case.

~~~
groby_b
As an athlete, you usually end up teaching younger athletes. (Well, at least
most of the ones I know do). It is an interesting experience, since your view
shifts.

The most interesting part? As you're less and less invested in actually being
brilliant in what you do, you gain a deeper understanding of the underlying
principles. (I used to be a professional dancer. Many things that were hard to
grok when I did them on a day-to-day basis are now entirely obvious. And I can
easily demonstrate them, or spot the mistakes. I just can't do them hundreds
of times, day-in, day-out :)

------
dustingetz
i've found it really hard to find older mentors. people who are "like me" -
that are like many HNers - seem rare, and the ones who become successful tend
to be SO successful that they're busy, hard to meet on purpose - and i don't
feel comfortable with cold calls like Warren Buffet did.

so I'm 26, and on accident I've met one or two people "like me" plus 10 years.
By active community participation, and deliberately doing things to stand out,
i am gradually meeting a few more. They love to do lunch with people "like
them", but they're inevitably busy, and they have other relationships as well,
and I don't have a lot of value to them other than as an employee - so I don't
get to interact on a regular basis unless I literally go and change employers.
which is sort of like dumping the current mentor. It sucks.

I've never met someone "like me" but 20 years older, or 30, or 40. That would
be incredible. The current strategy is to continue developing myself and meet
people as life takes its course, like a leaf on the wind. I wish there was a
way to accelerate this - who knows, by the time I've found a mentor who is 66,
retired, who gives a shit about me in the midst of all the other people who
want to interact with him - I'll be 56, not 26.

ideas?

~~~
groby_b
Stop looking for mentors and start looking for people you're interested in?
Develop friendships instead of mentorships?

If I don't know you from the next guy, why would I be interested in mentoring
_specifically_ you? I might as well spend that time to share my experience in
ways that reach a broader audience.

However, as I get to know you, I will start to care about you. (Or cut you out
of my life ;). As I take an interest in you as a person, I'm more willing to
spend my time mentoring you, because I help somebody I know and like.

If there's no personal connection, there's not much of an incentive to invest
time.

So, _always_ build a connection first, then do the ask.

~~~
dustingetz
yes, of course, i totally agree with you, therein lies the problem.
mentorships aren't explicit - they are, as you say, friendships. the rub is
that there is a set of people i have access to where i can begin building
relationships - and this set of people tends to be the 25-40yo hacker crowd.
over the course of months or years of developing relationships, i can gain
access to their mentors - the 40-60yo crowd, but i am wondering if some out-
of-the-box thinking can put me in a position to develop relationships with
these people on a more direct manner.

as an example: i want to build relationships with the 25-40 crowd, so i get
real active in the community, give killer lightning talks, etc: giving
lightning talks is a "hack" to gain access to people that i want to build
relationships with, to make them interested in building a relationship with
me. i'm wondering what channels i might leverage to do similar things to make
other classes of people interested in building a relationship with me.

i say "i want" a lot in this post, but as you point out its a "we want", these
relationships are clearly mutual.

~~~
groby_b
Well, as materialistic as it sounds:

1) Who are the people you'd _like_ to meet? (There's a lot of us old fogeys
out there ;) 2) What would you like from them? 3) What are they interested in?
4) What can you offer?

Take a look at those 4 questions, and you should be able to identify people
that you _should_ contact. I realize that's not the question, directly, but
unless you prep for success, it's hard to be successful.

So next, _how_ do you meet those people? At this point, you're down to
individuals, not a nebulous class. So, volunteer with their charity. Attend
classes organized by their employers. If at all possible, do something that
gets you into physical proximity. (Uh, please in a non-creepy way. Just saying
;)

But even if you're not in physical proximity - then you ask. Ideally, you get
an intro from somebody they know. That opens way more doors than anything
else. If you don't know anybody who knows them - cold call. Write a nice
e-mail explaining that you know they probably are very busy, but you're really
interested in XYZ, and you'd love to pick their brain over coffee, if they
have time.

And then wait and see what happens.

In recap: Don't meet "classes of people". Find interesting people and meet the
person.

------
neilk
I've noticed that Asian cultures celebrate growing older much more.

A friend of mine in her 20s went hiking in Japan and most of the hikers were
grandparents. They cautioned her against the hike, saying her muscles were too
underdeveloped.

Do Asian HN readers have a different attitude here?

~~~
ekianjo
Yeah hikers in Japan are mostly seniors and they are way more experienced than
youngsters. Everytime I go for a hike there are the usual grandparents who
hike in groups, and who overtake you on a climb with the blink of an eye. They
are way fitter than most 20s years old.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Those old Japanese hikers are awesome. While we were in Japan we did the
obligatory "climb Fuji at night to see the stars and the sunrise from the
top".

We didn't get started as early as we hoped, so we had to push hard to reach
the top in time. 100 ft from the top I collapsed with a very painful cramp in
my calf. So without a word this old Japanese guy gives me this incredible 30
second massage and I limp to the top.

The sunrise? Complete letdown. Prairie sunrises are much more spectacular, and
the star view is comparable. But the climb was awesome.

~~~
ekianjo
I did the Fuji climb a few years ago too, and this is a quite ugly mountain
when you climb. But I did find that the view, looking down watching at hundred
of hikers climbing with lights at night, was quite charming.

------
beaker
Did anyone find anything insightful, interesting, or entertaining about this
article? To those that upvoted it - why? I ask because I think I must be
missing a kernel of wisdom that you may have observed.

~~~
lebski88
In this case the article is only there as a prompt for conversation.The
comments have been quite interesting to me.

One of the points the article did make though (well, along the same theme
anyway) is that interest in ageing will wax and wane as you go through life.
As a 28 year old, soon to be married ageing is on my mind more now than it was
3 years ago. I went through a similar stage when I finished University.
Between the two though I may well have skipped past this story.

------
giulivo
> If I could go back to being 20 again, but stay the person I am, I would. But
> if going back to being 20 meant going back to being the person I was when I
> was 20, there's no way I would do that.

I'm not even 30 yet, but this is an always true statement. Thanks for sharing
it.

------
ghc
I don't know if it's just me, but I tend to shy away from reading these sorts
of articles here. On HN I'm able to recapture some of that child-like joy that
goes along with building things, so it feels extra-painful to be reminded of
my mortality.

~~~
zobzu
People should be taught to accept mortality, instead of the opposite. We'd
have a lot more happy people.

Death is natural. It happens, that's all. It's not a bad or good thing. It's
just part of everything else. If you know that before hand, you don't have to
"deal around it" or feel any pain.

~~~
D_Alex
With a little bit of investigation, and intellectual honesty, you will quickly
see that death (and its parent - aging) is in fact a very bad thing.

~~~
fallous
It's no more a "bad thing" than gravity being "bad" because I tripped and fell
down instead of floating. It is what it is, and the sooner you accept the
current realities the better off you are.

You also ignore the obvious results of death, one of which is reproduction and
birth of new life and the resultant new thought patterns that emerge from a
divorce from the constraints of past experience.

No one in good health looks forward to death but the lack of it means that we
aren't commenting on HN, we're all at best simple eukaryotes swimming in the
paradise of primordial ooze until we consume all non-organic resources and
then suffer an eternity of starvation.

~~~
D_Alex
Sheesh... come on, think about what you are saying. Firstly you say that "if
something exists, it cannot be judged to be bad"...? Second, death is
_necessary_ for new thought patterns...? Sorry, it is YOU who needs to accept
the current reality: death IS bad. Unfortunately we feel so powerless about
this right now that people think up justifications to cope with the fact. Me,
I'm in favor of acknowledging death as a problem and spending significant
resources to try and solve it. Instead of spending billions of dollars on
finding new ways to bring it about.

------
insertnickname
Relevant video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTvjVBFW9Xs>

------
a_a_r_o_n
"Why is it so bad to get old?"

Loss of facility, and younger people increasingly ignore you. That latter is
karma for many of us. Plus ça something something I forget.

~~~
poutine
The facility isn't lost nearly as much as one thinks. And the joke is on the
younger people, seriously.

~~~
learc83
There was a post on HN a while back about this. Apparently most of the studies
that demonstrated mental slowdown with age where flawed to the point of being
completely worthless.

------
funkah
Try reading this on an iPad.

 _Dynamic Views in Blogger require the use of a modern browser, and are not
currently supported on mobile devices.

You can visit a non-dynamic version of this blog, continue unsupported, or
upgrade your browser by clicking on one of the links below._

Ridiculous.

~~~
tygorius
Or with NoScript running in Firefox. Is requiring Javascript to read a
directly-linked blog post a new blogspot thing? Hard to figure why it's
necessary to just read some text.

Agreed on the assessment as ridiculous.

~~~
ranit8
Perhaps you already know this, adding _?v=0_ to the end of the URL to see the
older version. I even drafted a quick Greasemonkey script for this, but it
would need to run on all domains, as some of those blogs have their own domain
name outside of blogspot.com

~~~
tygorius
Thanks for the tip! I let myself get miffed at the "grow up" message and
forgot one of the prime rules of the intertubes: there are probably smart
people out there who have already solved your problem, you just have to
remember to look for them.

------
maeon3
If we cure aging abruptly, it may halt the accellerating returns of
technology. Notice that the time it takes for a retarded idea to go away is
the time it takes the community to train the kids the right way, and for the
stubborn old folks (who don't need training) with all the money and power to
hand off the reigns to the fresh mind. A cornerstone of our American explosive
progress is that old people and old ways get the hell out of the way by losing
their ability to think straight. If people never die, we will have to create a
new system to preserve this creative destruction cycle. A simulated turnover
of power from the old to the new. A scary thought: the popular world
religions/delusions during the time aging was cured will be the religions that
remain with us for a thousand years.

~~~
kiba
I heard old people are actually more open to new experience and more tolerant.

~~~
maeon3
How many people over 100 years old helped spark the agricultural revolution,
the industrial revolution, the computer revolution. If we cure aging, 90% of
customers will be this group, voting, writing legislation, these people don't
need no stinkin inter tube or whatever you call it. Im not talking about 50 to
80 old. Im talking about the entire world consisting of people who have the
mental age of over 100, with no ability or desire to replace the slide rule
with a calculator, or a calculator with a computer program. If we cure aging,
hopefully we can motivate the elderly to start startups on tech that came out
5 years ago.

~~~
cluda01
May I ask how old you are?

