I dislike the narrative that you can’t be happy as an adult. Yeah having nothing to do and no responsibilities was cool, but I would not trade what I have now to have it back.
Adult me has an awesome wife and kids, good friends, hobbies that I wouldn’t have dreamed of as a kid, a tool bench full of fun power tools, and freedom to use my free time basically however I want.
I am way happier as an adult than I was as a teenager.
I had a shitty childhood, was miserable in my teens, was possibly even more miserable through my 20s. When I was 16 I told myself if I was still as miserable by 30 I would consider ending it there.
Fortunately around 30, after my low point of the pandemic, is where things started to actually fall into place for me - both in terms of external factors and, slowly, internal monologue.
While I still have a lot of mental holdovers from all that time spent in a depressed state, I would generally say I’m sustainably “happy” these days. Something I genuinely thought I would never reach.
To anyone in a bad place right now, just know that if you stick it out, life actually can be surprisingly worthwhile.
My dad always told me that life begins at 30.
I turn 40 this year, and I really agree with him. The first three decades were just awkwardly fumbling around and getting nothing done because I was a dumbass. The last ten years I really got it together and I feel comfortable with myself for the first time ever.
I was similar but I didn’t compare my life to others, so kind of just came to learn that this is normal life. I found it very beautiful and humbling. I treasure the days of being homeless and alone, so when I need to I just disappear by myself off into the wilderness somewhere for a few days. It feels safe and like home. I reflect on my stoicism and smile about knowing how much I can handle and how little in control I really am. Life is so cool like that.
I see a post like OP’s and it’s just some unappreciative brat that’s never tried to see beauty in life. They just miss being looked after by someone else.
Yeesh that seems a bit harsh…
You might want to use some of that self-reflection to examine why you feel that way about someone when you don’t know what kind of life they’ve had.
Hear, hear! Bigger problems nowadays, but more control over my life to compensate.
There’s also something that’s really calming about having more life experience? Like back in 2013 I was mortified at the prospect of getting bad grades. Missing assignments was the #1 source of stress in my life, and it was all-consuming at the time.
Now? I know not only did that not matter, but that any given thing that stresses me out that badly has a good chance of ultimately not mattering in the same way.
I listened to an interview with a woman who researched aging and spent time interviewing lots of elderly people. The majority of those interviewed called their 60s the best decade of their life. I also dislike the myth that your youth was your peak and it’s all downhill from there. There’s good in all times of your life, lean into the experiences that are available at the time and don’t worry about how good the past was or how the future might be worse.
do you have any info about what year when they’re in their 60s? i read similar research and concluded that its because it was the 90s
tool bench full of fun power tools
More tools than you can count on your fingers, like 4 or so.
This would have been a weird day because I was 40 in 2013.
Damn, if the last time you were truly happy was just before your friend came round for a sleepover eleven years ago, that friend must have been a horrendous house guest
Like the “nobody wants to work anymore” phrase, there’s a version of this post for pretty much every generation.
The constant variables are the age of the author and audience with whom it resonates, not the specific changes between the two time periods.
In 6-8 years or so we’ll see a new version about TikTok and late night sessions with ChatGPT doing your homework as the good ol’ days that have now been ruined by adulthood.
People coming of age with the harsh realities of life will lament their loss of childhood until humanity’s final days.
The constant variables are the age of the author and audience with whom it resonates, not the specific changes between the two time periods.
People coming of age with the harsh realities of life will lament their loss of childhood until humanity’s final days.
I agree with your sentiment, but a possible evolution is that “the happiest time of your life” has gradually pushed younger. Young adulthood used to be that sweets spot people would be nostalgic about. You had a low skill (and low expectation) job and a cheap apartment. You got paid decently and multiple pathways for upwards mobility were available. Marriage and home ownership were obvious futures for you in the years ahead. You had the freedom of adulthood to make your own choices, without having the weight of the entire rest of your life on your shoulders. Your friends were all in similar situations. Nostalgia was around drinking too much on a beach during sunset or around a campfire in the middle of a forest. Perhaps traveling to distant destinations for simple exploration and adventure in one friend’s clapped out (and paid off) car.
Now, as in the meme posted, the “ideal” nostalgia is being under the umbrella of your parents. Your parents roof. Your parents money. You not able to make adult choices for yourself.
I suspect people view their childhood and/or late teens through rose colored glasses, they remember the isolated moments of joy without the surrounding context, I remember being stressed about exams, unsure about the future, unsure of even my own identity, plenty of other concerns, but sure I enjoyed a few sleepovers and gaming sessions with friends but when we’re remembering those days fondly it is from a safe perspective knowing all those concerns were resolved in a positive way, a survivorship bias, those that “failed at life”, became homelessness/suicide(drugs etc), aren’t here to reminisce with us all about the “simpler” times.
People are always determined to be unhappy. Of course there’s reasons to be unhappy about the state of the world today but it’s not as if 2015 was a gold period of human history either.
On average things were definitely worse in the past. I would definitely not want to live in the 1950s for example.
We were very different ages in 2013, I think, heh. I got laid off from a job, sacrificed basically everything to try life in another country, failed to get a job and visa in time, and later wrapped it up by breaking my leg and ankle rather badly.
Breaking a leg is supposed to be good luck though so I’m sure everything turned out fine, right?
USA and Japan. I had a company willing to sponser a visa, but they’d never done it before and it would take time. My stay was about up and I didn’t have the funds to vacation somewhere else and then come back to maybe get a job and visa. I would move back to Japan in late 2015 after recovering both physically (I spent 6 months+ in a wheelchair and another 6+ months on crutches before finally transitioning to varying levels of cane use for another roughly 6 months) and recovering financially. I’ve been in Japan since.
That sounds like you did a good job on your leg.
Least you made it there. How you like it? How many hours a week you work? Made any friends with 100% Japanese people?