Life gets Easier.

What’s so bad about getting older? The majority of people wince when their birthday comes around. When we’re children, we have a difficult time understanding why. I remember being so confused when I’d ask an adult their age when I was a kid. What’s the big deal, I’d think. “I love my birthday,” I’d say. To me, it was a time of celebration and gifts and cake and ice cream and everything good. So why were all of the adults around me so upset when anyone talked about age? It’s because when we’re children, death is beyond our purview. We’re spending time like it’s a credit card without limits. We live like it’ll never run out. We don’t find out until many years later, maybe with the passing of a loved one or with a life threatening scare, that this thing does have an end date.

In the west, the United States in particular, youth is glamorized. With youth you have health, beauty, malleability, opportunity, and time. Oh so much time. As we age, we realize all of this diminishes. It’s just the way it is.

The older we get the more aware we become of the time ticking away.

We start to feel the effects of aging just like those who came before us and conventional wisdom starts telling us that growing old is something to feel upset about. 

Here’s an example of a conversation I had with a friend who recently turned 27.

“Yeah, man… I’m getting there,” he said.

“Getting where?” I replied.

“I’m getting older.”

“Oh. Good for you,” I replied. 

“Really? What’s good about it?”

“Everything, man.”

“Why do you say that?” he said. 

“Why wouldn’t I? Life gets easier with age,” I replied. 

He laughed, “How so?”

“It just does. Think about it. When we’re young, our vision is so blurry. We have so many distractions. While we’re young, everything’s a possibility. Everything’s an opportunity. We have so much to consider. So many choices. So many decisions. What we’re going to do with the rest of our lives. Who we’re going to spend our lives with. Where we’re going to live. What’s going to make us feel fulfilled. So on and so forth. It’s so much to consider. It makes life very difficult” “Ok…”

“Think of it like this,” I said, “the time we have to live is a constraint. Many people think constraints are negative but I don’t think that at all. In my mind, constraints are a good thing. For example, it’s much more difficult for me to sit down to write on a blank page without any parameters than it is for me to use a prompt. When you can write about anything, it’s difficult to choose what to write. On the other hand, if someone asks you to write about a time when you were sad, it’d be much easier. The prompt is the constraint.”

“I see where you’re going with this…”

“Constraints help us determine what’s important. And in this way if we see aging as a constraint, we can see it as a good thing. It actually makes life easier.”

As soon as we stop looking at getting older as a negative thing and start using it to clarify our lives, the better off we’ll be.

If we’re paying enough attention to ourselves and the world around us, everyday we get older we should learn a little more about ourselves and the world around us. If we’re critical of these two things in the way I think we should be, we have no choice but to develop a better understanding of life and how to live it. 

If we’re getting older the right way, we’ll care less about the opinions of others around us. 

If we’re getting older the right way, we’ll stop chasing attention for the wrong reasons and start living for the right ones. 

If we’re getting older the right way, we’ll keep the right people in our lives and cut the wrong ones out.

If we’re getting older the right way, we’ll keep in mind that a $10 pair of blue jeans will cloth our body in the same way a $100 pair will.

And we’ll realize that we can’t take our blue jeans with us when we’re gone. So we’d be better off using that money to make a memory with someone worth making it with.

And if we choose to look at getting older as a good thing, we can stop worrying about all the things we haven’t done yet and start being thankful for all the things we have. 

This all makes life a little easier.