I don't understand people who want to be old.

[notherenotnow]

I don't know, is it just me who doesn't want to get old? Old, as in older than something around 25. It's just such a crazy idea to me. Could you imagine yourself as a 60 year old? 70? 80? I definitely could not. I don't understand how people would want to live to such age. Why have we, as a society, accepted that the greatest thing that could happen to you is living for as long as possible? It feels so unreal to me. Maybe I'm really too immature to understand.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I don't understand it either. It's bizarre

 

[not-2-b-the-answer]

I don't get it either. Especially getting old and being in a nursing home. Unable to take care of yourself.
Kinda like me now but I can wipe my own ass.

 

[Ash’Girl]

As someone in their fourth decade of life…. "Old" is relative.

As a teenager I thought 30 was ancient, but as a teenager who used self harm as a coping mechanism and was prone to impulsive uninformed ctb attempts, I figured it'd be a miracle if I got to 21 anyway.

In my mid 20s I tried to get my shit together and give life a go without the unhealthy coping mechanisms. Then 40 seemed ancient and I still figured I'd be dead before then.

But life has a way of ticking on, and even when you're stuck in a situation that makes each second feel like eternity, when you look back you often wonder: where the hell did all the time go?!

I don't want to live to see retirement because with retirement given how much I've abused my body over the years I'll probably end up with multiple health issues and also be broke. I don't want to end up in a care facility. I don't want to lose my faculties, physically or mentally, and be reliant on others for basic care.

But truthfully, when you're younger you can't ever imagine yourself as "old". And when you do get "old", you don't know how you got there and still feel like you did when you were much younger. My mum is in her 70s and says often she looks in the mirror and can't understand who she sees there as she still feels about 30.

 

[F@#$]

It just happens, being old fuckin sucks!

 

[hopelessgirl]

I don't get it either.

 

[VidFlumina]

I mean someone might look forward to retirement, no longer having to bust ass at work, just enjoy money, peace and quiet. I can't think of any other reason.

 

[FuneralCry]

The thought of reaching an old age terrifies me and disturbs me personally, getting older is just undesirable suffering, I also don't understand why anyone would wish for that. To have the ability to exist is just so burdensome, I'd certainly prefer to eternally not exist no matter what.

 

[Worndown]

Age happens when all those things in life that could kill us...don't. It is not a goal, it just is. For most people it is a good thing.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

I see that too that most people want to grow old . that is irrational to me to want to become a decayed , in pain 90 year old that needs to be taken care of constantly in a nursing home is hell . but they say i'm irrational for not wanting that. life is torture even if you are young imo . when you lose your health as in old age it makes life a billion times worse.

imo young healthy and don't work a job is still hell . then if you have to work a 40 hour a week job it makes life a million times worse . then if you lose your health and or are old a billion times worse multiplied again if you still have to work a job.

I don't want to live at all much less old .

A doctor works in a nursing home wrote this and I put an excerpt below from the article . this is what they hide about old age and nursing homes and how most humans end up which just this shows life is bad :

Who By Very Slow Decay

[Trigger warning: Death, pain, suffering, sadness] I. Some people, having completed the traditional forms of empty speculation – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, &#8220…

slatestarcodex.com

"If you are like the patients I see dying, then here is how you will go.

You will grow old. When you were young, you would go to institutions and gradually gather letters after your name: BA, MD, PhD. Now that you are old, you do the same thing, but they are different institutions and different letters. Your doctors will introduce you to their colleagues as "Mary Smith, COPD, PVD, ESRD, IDDM". With each set of letters comes another decrease in quality of life.

At first these sacrifices will be minor. The COPD means you have to breathe from an oxygen tank you carry around wherever you go. The PVD will prevent you from walking more than a few feet at a time. The ESRD will require three hours dialysis in a hospital or outpatient dialysis center three times a week. The IDDM will require insulin shots after every meal. Not fun, but hardly inconsistent with a life worth living.

Eventually these will add up beyond your ability to manage them on your own, and you will be sent off to a nursing home. This will seem like a reasonable enough idea, and sometimes it goes well. Other times it gives you freedom to develop a completely new set of morbidities totally unconstrained by what a person in any other situation could possibly be expected to survive.

You will become bedridden, unable to walk or even to turn yourself over. You will become completely dependent on nurse assistants to intermittently shift your position to avoid pressure ulcers. When they inevitably slip up, your skin develops huge incurable sores that can sometimes erode all the way to the bone, and which are perpetually infected with foul-smelling bacteria. Your limbs will become practically vestigial organs, like the appendix, and when your vascular disease gets too bad, one or more will be amputated, sacrifices to save the host. Urinary and fecal continence disappear somewhere in the process, so you're either connected to catheters or else spend a while every day lying in a puddle of your own wastes until the nurses can help you out. The digestive system isn't too happy either by this point, so you can either have a tube plugged directly into your stomach or just skip the middleman and have an IV line feeding nutrients into your bloodstream.

Somewhere in the process your mind very quietly and without fanfare gives up the ghost. It starts with forgetting a couple of little things, and progresses until you have no idea what's going on ever. In medical jargon, healthy people are "alert and oriented x 3", which means oriented to person (you know your name), oriented to time (you know what day/month/year it is), and oriented to place (you know you're in a hospital). My patients who have the sorts of issues I mentioned in the last paragraph are generally alert and oriented x0. They don't remember their own names, they don't know where they are or what they're doing there, and they think it's the 1930s or the 1950s or don't even have a concept of years at all. When you're alert and oriented x0, the world becomes this terrifying place where you are stuck in some kind of bed and can't move and people are sticking you with very large needles and forcing tubes down your throat and you have no idea why or what's going on.

So of course you start screaming and trying to attack people and trying to pull the tubes and IV lines out. Every morning when I come in to work I have to check the nurses' notes for what happened the previous night, and every morning a couple of my patients have tried to pull all of their tubes and lines out. If it's especially bad they try to attack the staff, and although the extremely elderly are really bad at attacking people this is nevertheless Unacceptable Behavior and they have to be restrained ie tied down to the bed. A presumably more humane alternative sometimes used instead or in addition is to just drug you up on all of those old-timey psychiatric medications that actual psychiatrists don't use anymore because of their bad reputation.

 

[R_N]

I never saw anyone saying they prefer being old over being young. They don't like it but the only alternative is death.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Obviously no one wants to get old; they just prefer that to death. Most people have careers and/or families they care about that pull them through life.

 

[mia_qwerty]

I always wanted to grow old. I think there's a lot of freedom in that lots gets let go of and one knows who they are and they get to be of support to younger generations. I won't make it to be old/older now as I'm ill and plan to exit. But I'm gutted I won't get to be old.

 

[penguinl0v3s]

You're misunderstanding how people think, nobody wants to age. They want to live and be young forever, but of course that's impossible so they settle for living and aging.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

I always wanted to become old, even as a child. It never came to my mind to end my life in early ages. But life has to meet certain conditions for me, that include good health (until old age ofc!) and a good life that I want to live (that is pretty much subjective for everyone what "a good life" is). Luckily those conditions were met for most of my life.

I still would want to become old but not under my current conditions with a declining life quality due to unsolvable financial issues. That's not a life I want to live. No health issues - at least that is still good.

If my life wasn't so fucked up currently I'd really be happy to remember how good my life was and what I could experience during my life. Becoming old isn't that bad when life (incl. health) is good.

 

[Catch-22]

I'm probably what you would consider to be old. No it is a picnic! I'm sick of chronic illness and no way out of this hell but my luck I probably will live another 20 years.. not if I can help it. First chance there is with a reasonable success rate and I'm out of here. But it does hurt me to see how many young members are in here that are suffering so ... I did too at a young age and I always thought it would get better and it did for a few years but these days I find out that there might be some answers on what's causing depression and Suicidal Thoughts. things they didn't know about when I was younger. Unfortunately it's not things you're going to hear about from a psychiatrist or a counselor. Look at the singer named Ren and look at his story. I wish I knew what he knew many years ago except I just found out about infections that I have that have probably been causing this my whole life. Too late for me but when I see young people want to die I just hope they can find answers to get rid of their pain. But I'm in no way trying to preach pro-life! Because I can guarantee you that there are people in here if they could get rid of their mental and physical pain then they would not want to die. Obviously that makes sense.

 

[Orbitc]

I am very afraid of old age - I am now 35 years old and my work as an escort depends on my appearance. I can already see the first few gray hairs and it's making me panic. I definitely won't live after 40 - I don't want to be old))

 

[Catch-22]

I am very afraid of old age - I am now 35 years old and my work as an escort depends on my appearance. I can already see the first few gray hairs and it's making me panic. I definitely won't live after 40 - I don't want to be old))

I don't know much about that world but I do know a thing or two about men.. men love women of all ages all sizes and I definitely know that they would not care if you had a few gray hairs. You can always dye the hair. Nowadays they have all kinds of over the counter things you can put on wrinkles to make them temporarily go away. There's always a man that will pay.. what I've learned it's not always about your appearance they want you to make them feel good about their appearance.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Depends on your circumstances. If you're in a toxic home environment, you might well look forward to being an adult so you can be free of it. If you don't like being around immature teenagers at school and college who may bully you, it can get easier when you're in your 30's and 40's because they tend to pick on their peers more and you can start to see them for the insecure, sadistic little shits they are. Some things can get easier as you get older. My 30's were actually my better years in retrospect. Other things though? Yeah- not so good.

Health and wealth has more to do with it though than age. I've known some older people who have been lucky but yeah- I don't think anyone in their right mind wants to end up rotting in a nursing home.

But yeah- like others have said- age seems much more important when you're young. As you get older, stuff starts to blur- not really a good thing in itself because you can just end up accepting a life you're not happy with and feel increasingly stuck.

 

[Little_Suzy]

They want to see their seed bloom!

 

[thewalkingdread]

I don't really think most people want/like to be old. Nobody likes that.

Just look at all the stuff they subject themselves to stop aging: crazy diets, cosmetics, surgeries, pills, etc.

The real problem is the dellusional "retirement plan" indoctrination propagated by our capitalist/consumerist society — like the good old carrot in a stick.

Sure... some of it is based on prudence and reasonable forethought. No one should get old and have no money to pay for proper care.

But people are actually being programmed to work themselves off, to the point of killing themselves with stress and exaustion in the hopes that one day in the future they can finally live the "grand life".

They even believe in stupid, motivational, phrases like: "Old age is like a fine wine"... And that's a big old load of Bullcrap.

 

[Orbitc]

I don't know much about that world but I do know a thing or two about men.. men love women of all ages all sizes and I definitely know that they would not care if you had a few gray hairs. You can always dye the hair. Nowadays they have all kinds of over the counter things you can put on wrinkles to make them temporarily go away. There's always a man that will pay.. what I've learned it's not always about your appearance they want you to make them feel good about their appearance.

Men are cynical bastards who will talk shit about my age because I often hear them say it about other women. I look younger than my age, but for 10 years I have been lying that I am 25 years old))) Men prefer young and beautiful - what you say is sophistry.

 

[losing hope]

I'm into F1 motor racing (pre 2000), rock & roll, drugs & sex. These things are less fun when you are older. So I've quit my job to cram in as much of that shit as possible before I ctb.

Funnily enough I'm finding my spiritually via this strategy. Similar to how Russell Brand did via being a smackhead & his subsequent recovery.

 

[leavingthesoultrap]

Back in the day ppl at least used to look forward to retirement when becoming old. Millennials and younger gens will get fck all. The suicide rates will sky rocket in the future if this problem won't get fixed

 

[tvoisluga]

Hit the nail on the head. I am still yet tpo find one good argument for wanting to reach old age and no one irl seems to give me one but they all don't share this perspective. Cognitive dissonance much?

 

[until death]

I don't understand it either

 

[Sprite_Geist]

This thread is very relatable. When I was 18 I did not want to reach 21; when I reached 21 I did not want to live past my late twenties; now here I am at the age of 31. Growing older is very upsetting to me.

 

[losing hope]

In the UK I think Brexit showed old ppl are generally unhappy. Because IIRC most older ppl voted for brexit, basically because they wanted to throw their trauma & insecurities onto EU ppl. Rather than deal with it themselves.

 

[Aim]

If i wasn't struggling so much i would love to grow old and grumpy :p but ever since mental illness took over that's not really happening, or an option anymore.

 

[Sky_atri]

Ever since I was young I've always said I would never want to live past 40.
I'm in my 30s now and the only biological clock that is ticking is the one telling me to die.