Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
Older people can remember what it was like to be young. Younger people, on the other hand, cannot know first hand what it is to be or grow old. They can only see others around them and get some sense of the struggles, imagining themselves to be immune to those.
In your experience, what is it like to be or grow old (whatever your definition of old is) from the physical health aspect and the general frailty of the aging human body?
What are the health related struggles that have come into your life or have gotten worse because of increased age and how have you dealt with them?
With your experience and knowledge, what would you advise younger people (or even your own younger self of decades past, if you could)?
311 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 283 ms ] threadDo the hard things first. Hard things get easier with practice but practice takes time. The easy things remain easy regardless of practice and just rob you of the time required by the hard things.
It becomes survivorship bias when I become more specific and speak to what works versus what does not, particularly in contrast to common faulty social expectations.
‘What advice would I give my younger self’ also doesn’t compute. Because that would mean that I would end up with entirely different life experience and the person giving the advice would not exist as they would have changed. In sci fi, this would be the classic causal loop/temporal paradox time travel dilemma.
If this is about health, you are better off obtaining a DNA report and go through the high risk illnesses you have inherited with your physician. I did this and was able to identify a few things missed by my previous maternal units. Some of them probably died because one mutation was undiagnosed.
From a dietary perspective, follow the grandmother diet. Eat what your longest living ancestors lived. It helps if you haven’t migrated far off.
P.S: Don’t rely on dna ancestry reports migrations. I am South East Asian and ancestry report suggested that I had a Finnish ancestor. I doubt if I can follow the Sami diet. In California. So there is that...
My suggestion is to draw a family tree for upto 4-7 generations. 7 is ideal but would be tough for most.
"Cohort" is the year you are born. This might make you a Baby Boomer, X, Y, Z, ... You keep your cohort throughout your life.
The cohort who got physics PhD's prior to 1968 got jobs in the field easily (e.g. most were good at physics, it didn't matter how good you were at musical chairs); after 1968 the job situation changed (you certainly were good at music chairs.) This is a function of when you were born.
Are you actually worried that speculating about your younger self might accidentally erase you from the sands of time? We don't actually have a way of delivering our advice to our past selves, so the activity seems mostly harmless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_His_Bootstraps
+ PKD's The Skull...: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skull_(short_story)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment
People matter. Learn how to interact well with them. Yes, it matters that you be yourself, and that you hold to what is true, but don't use either of those as an excuse to be clumsy (or worse, brutal) with people.
Even things like clothes matter, because they're part of how we interact with people.
Given time, you'll see.
Trust - but take care in who.
Be so detached from material goods that it would be hard for someone to hurt you, intentionally or not.
How to do this is of course hard. Meditation helps me. Relationships. Balancing my consumption of news. Staying away from histrionic people that drive that anxiety (read Twitter). Taking a break from that which bothers me (developing hobbies and other interests).
Even as I get older I increasingly have a sense that all attempts to control will be resisted by others. Even when you have their best interests at heart. People willfully, sometimes ignorantly make their own big mistakes to resist being controlled. Sometimes though we’re not as smart as we think we are. This applies to so many situations, including work, politics, and parenting!
In work situations I am conscious more and more of wanting to lead by following, stepping back, let other people be in charge and get the glory. It’s really the most sustainable path for a sane life. Instead of doing, teach. Instead of teach, listen to other people’s wisdom. Paradoxically by being silent and non-action can sometimes have the biggest impact.
The impact may not always be positive. In some cases you are uniquely situated to lead, and by turning the opportunity down you create a vacuum for a less savory character to take place and inflict pain onto others.
Eventually too I read a lot of History about divisive times, and it showed me a lot of tragedy, much worse than what we're experiencing now. But also bounce back from that tragedy. You learn through life (and History) that Politics is relentlessly cyclical. Those that attempt control, even well intentioned, are ultimately resisted and replaced by the next regime that tries to take control, on and on...
That's not to say I don't vote. And I think you could meaningfully participate in the Political process out of a sense of duty or service. Like actually volunteering for a cause, etc you believe in. But don't waste your precious time on Twitter on Cable News outrage cycles that’ll just make you mad with zero impact on anything
I wrote an article on this: https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2020/08/06/political-twitter-o...
You sound like a crazy person. Have you been diagnosed with NPD?
That is not a good idea. Eat at least twice per day to moderate insulin and other hormones.
The best advice I've seen is, "Eat what your grandmother ate."
Then avoid HFCS, and you're good.
Here is the basic concept: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-....
Just split your plate (approximately of a hand size in diameter) on 4 parts: 2 parts vegetables, 1 is protein/meat, 1 is for carbs (should not be overcooked, just slightly undercooked to not transform it into fast digesting food). Spoon of healthy oils.
Thats it, 3 times per day. Nothing more, nothing less. Here is my diet for the last couple of months and this is the most impactful thing to the quality of my life besides walking every day at least an hour.
I didn't get the necessary practice and discipline to do independent work unless I did it for fun. This had to be learned the hard way when I grew older.
Please don't praise kids for being "smart", teach them that putting real effort into something will pay off.
It works only sometimes, and the kids will curse you for their empty, wasted in third, life.
The internet and medical community is full of misinformed people who will fill your head about how a pinched nerve or a slipped disc can cause you immense pain and some doctor may even put you under the knife. But at least read about TMS before you do something drastic.
See tmswiki.org (not my site) for hundreds and thousands of people who have recovered from decades of back pain after spending hundreds and thousands of dollars but never realized it could be simple TMS which doesn't cost a dime to fix.
I'm amongst one of these people and after nearly suffering for many many years did someone on hacker news posted about it and that comment changed my life literally. Pain is all I could think about back then and it interfered with my work, relationships, life. Just reading Sarnos book got me halfway there. Then daily exercises and watching hundreds of testimonials on YouTube made by common people helped me more.
(1) https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/An_Introduction_to_Tension_Myosi...
I personally think its quack science, but it seems to work for some people, so that is what matters.
These 2 things can make a huge quality of life difference once you are past 40. I would also add your eyes, but there is not a lot you can do about that one! Almost everyone needs reading glasses by 40. Glasses suck, but you get used to it.
Psychologically, the best I can say is to forgive yourself for any stupid things you did when you were young. Try to be as kind to yourself as you would be to others. I think of this as the "inverse golden rule." Really important as you get older, because regrets and self-doubt pile up otherwise.
How loud is too loud? A rule of thumb is that if you walk around with earbuds and can clearly hear a podcast while standing next to a busy street, it is loud enough to damage your hearing.
Hearing loss is a risk factor for dementia. As people lose their hearing it becomes harder to engage with their friends and family which speeds cognitive decline.
Irritation from cold wind and water exposure causes the bone surrounding the ear canal to develop lumps of new bony growth which constrict the ear canal. Where the ear canal is actually blocked by this condition, water and wax can become trapped and give rise to infection
He told me not to wear my glasses unless I had a headache. He said that your eye has muscles and they need workouts like the rest of your body. So I basically never wore them.
I was just on the cusp of needing a prescription back then. He gave me glasses because insurance covered it so why not he said. But then gave me the advice above.
I’m 43 now and can see just fine without glasses. My prescription has been stable for 20 years.
Identical to my non prism glasses.
My advice, if your head hurts, there is a reason for it. And it probably matters.
If I let my eye muscles work, my vision would actively deteriorate.
Not if these eye drops can help it!
http://fdaaa.trialstracker.net/trial/NCT03809611/
I think it's more like 45 than 40.
2, time goes by way faster than you think, blink and you'll quite literally miss decades of your life
advice? don't ever put off until tomorrow what you can do today, the old you is depending on the you now to look out for him/her.
This is powerful. Thank you.
Inside, I’m still twenty, Stance. Only if I pass a mirror, or if my body won’t do what I want, do I realize that I’m an old man. I don’t see the potbelly and the varicose veins and the grey hair where I’ve got any left. She has to live with it.”
“Every time I see a mirror I’m amazed. I end up wondering who’s taken over the outside of me. A disgusting old goat, from the look of him. The kind I used to snicker at when I was twenty. He scares me, Stance. He looks like a dying man. I’m trapped inside him, and I’m not ready to go.”
For those interested, check out The Complete Guide to Intermittent Fasting by the Canadian nephrologist (Jason?) Fung.
I paraphrase: "Learn to classify people into three categories: givers, sharers, and takers. Surround yourself with givers. Sharers are also acceptable. Cut out the takers as quickly as you can."
A verbatim follow-on quote: "Takers make a beeline for givers. The needy are always anxious to drain the emotions and finances of those who are givers, before somehow or other they move on to sponge elsewhere, leaving givers to wonder at their own foolishness."
(Edit: apparently people don't want advice from older people to younger people if it's not the older person giving it. I can only apologise. It's the primary piece of concrete actionable life advice I remember that was given to me by anyone more than three times my age.)
I was having trouble with this once and a wiser friend told me it's perfectly acceptable to say "I've decided x".
So I tried it out, and it seems to work. Some people are much more talented at the right level of response.
Oh, and also: https://xkcd.com/2346/
1) Be a sharer, but prefer givers as friends
OR
2) Be a taker.
The advice I'd give is to assume that any activity you might ever want to do will be harder next year.
Some skills never go out of fashion.
[0] Personally, I found learning C harder than falling off bicycles.
I will not be at all surprised if firmware stays in C until Rust has been practical for use in firmware for several years as well. I don't doubt it'll happen, I haven't written a line of assembly for my firmware in a decade either, but consider how many hundreds of thousands of lines of C there are in the libraries for just one target architecture.
It sounds cool and useful and I'm looking forward to it, but every time I start asking around if Rust is worth the effort the answer from people who use Rust a lot is "not really" because my projects aren't big complex firmware beasts. I am not surprised that a firmware developer with expertise in C can easily find work.
With or without the helmet? Because the opinions are divided.
For me it is my dog.
How I see it, taking care of a pet usually requires lots of effort and selflessness. You need to make sacrifices and stay consistent. E.g. with a dog, sometimes you have to go for a walk even if you'd prefer to stay at home and watch TV. All this seems to me the opposite of taking care about only yourself.
Unless you earn tons of money and can retire by 40, all debts paid.
And then you'll find much fewer people interesting, and more people annoying. That's a function of knowing more.
2. Regret is almost always about what you didn't do, and rarely about what you chose freely or decided yourself.
3. Understand the effect of compounding in every endeavour.
4. There is no 4.
If you're lucky, you'll stare into it sooner than later and become better for it. (When you're old, it's hard to do anything about it.)
Once you get it, you will know how to live your life to fullest while not leaving a debt and cleanup to others.
This has affected my work as I used to just be able to sit and code for hours in Vim as I'd have all the function signatures memorized, but now I spend a lot more time in the docs and have to use a proper IDE. I now write more helpful comments, so I can remember why I did something. Also, I find myself having to take notes to come back to later. I wish it was a skill I'd picked up when I was younger, rather than having to learn now.
Maybe now I can’t remember things because I’m not experiencing them as thoroughly because I’m always thinking about something else. Or maybe I just realize a lot of details don’t matter. Or maybe it’s just age and my brain doesn’t work as well. Or maybe it’s accumulated damage of twenty years of occasional consumption of alcohol.
One other phenomena I've noticed is that I've begun misspelling words a lot. Not like poor spelling, but using their/there/theyre incorrectly, homophones like fill/feel, or plural is vs plural are, etc. I know these things, it's like my brain goes into autopilot. Probably payback for always correcting people when I was a smartass of a younger person.
I rely on notes too. I'm not sure it's entirely due to my memory getting worse with age. It's also that as you progress to more senior or leadership roles over the course of your career, the rate at which you become interrupted by questions or meetings increases, and the number of different issues you need to juggle also increases. I use my notes as a non-volatile memory to save my current mental state so I can resume after these interrupts.
If I'm coding uninterrupted and in a state of "flow", I can still remember details of my code from years ago.
Cartoon about interrupting a programmer: https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt...
Three in the morning and a kid with 105 who has been throwing up for a day and you have to decide what to do. A crappy apartment but making a morgage would be a real stretch, no fun for years, and you need to work it out. A job you want but in a place far away from family and friends. These things and many more will be between you and them.
Finding somebody you like, and admire, and who you like to get sexy with, and who has something of the same idea about money as you do, and who wants many of the same things in life, is tough.
Be kind. Really try to be kind. As young person, I am sure you already can recollect a few instances you have been kind; increase the frequency and amplitude of it.