I remember experiencing the world much more vividly when I was a little boy.
I would step outside on an autumn evening and feel joy as the cool breeze rustled the leaves and caressed my skin. In the summers, I would listen to the orchestra of insects buzzing around me. I would waddle out of the cold swimming pool and the most wonderful shiver would cascade out of me as I peed in the bathroom. In the winters, I would get mesmerized by the simple sound of my boots crunching the snow under me.
These were not experiences that I actively sought out. They just happened. I did not need to stop to smell the figurative roses, the roses themselves would stop me in my tracks.
As I got older, I started feeling less and less and thinking more and more.
I’ve tried meditation, recreation, vacation, resignation, and medication. Some of these things have helped but I am still left wondering… is this a side effect of getting older? Or is there something wrong with me?
I’m sure it also has something to do with that when you get older, you’ve had those experiences many more times than as a child. They just don’t feel that specia anymore.l
Wow, that rings brutal, but true. “Childlike wonder” is truly special.
This is also why days feel faster as you age. More repetition and your brain doesn’t need to form as much new memories.
Want to live longer? Experience more novelty!
It’s kind of the opposite for me. Like many people said, when you are young, every experience mostly feels new. However, when everything feels new to you, there’s really nothing special about it. For me, I always embraced the familiar. I look back at my memories of family vacations with disappointment, because as everyone else was wanting to go and do fun things, I was complaining about how I would rather be watching TV or playing my gameboy. Now as an adult, I understand how precious our experiences can be. I look out at a mountain and I appreciate the beauty of it. I think about the history that has taken place around it. I think about how other people might have experienced it. I get so much more from it than I ever would have as a child.
Same here. It simply comes from within. Everything now is so special because I’m aware how fleeting everything is.
Thanks for your comment. It resonated a lot with my experience.
Man, I don’t know, but this post was beautifully crafted, you sir are a poet.
I’ll just mention my own experience. I struggled with depression and/or anxiety for basically my entire life from as early as I can remember and I definitely didn’t have the kinds of joyful childhood experiences you describe. However now that I’m older and my anxiety is being properly treated (medication) I’ve definitely had more / stronger feelings of joy with simple experiences. All this is to say that I think it might be a depression thing, not a age thing.
I get exactly what you’re saying but I’m not sure I have a great answer for you. I think it’s all about dopamine. Smoking cannabis reconnects me with that childlike feeling. Also, having a kid really helped me. Seeing the world through her eyes as she experienced childhood is amazing. Before kid I felt like I couldn’t really enjoy anything like I could before without drugs. I’m not sure how much of that is depression and how much is just getting older.
If you read up on how our brains age, it’s basically pruning neuron branches. While this is a good thing up to a point, the pruning process continues well past our brains’ peak performance because evolution is done with you at that point, I.e. you had your kids by then.
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It’s do with living in the moment vs spending your time thinking about what you did or worrying about what the future might bring, IMHO.
We become way more prone to spend our time doing things like thinking about stuff we did (and how we miss it if it was good or could’ve done it better if it was bad) and worrying about what the future can bring (and not necessarily in grand terms: somethingas simple as “I have to get a haircut” which then goes one to “when will I have the time”, then “but I need that time for X” and so on) as we grow older.
You absolutelly can still have some moments of wonder (for things as simple as how a cobweb looks with droplets of morning mist on it) but you need to be present there in mind also, not just in body, and not to not let some memory or concern rush in to take your mental attention away from the now.
I had a point in my life with a ton of anxiety and ended up learning Mindfulness (which is simply to try and not say anything to yourself in your mind, which is surprisingly hard to do for more than a few seconds) to stop the feeling (if you’re not constantly looking back to something bad or fearing for something bad in the future you don’t feel anxious about those things) and as a side effect I ended up with the habit of being more often present in the moment and that’s how you just enjoy little wonders when you come across them.
Still, it’s nowhere at the level one has as a kid.
I am lucky in the sense that I like specific things; and the feeling of liking them hasn’t faded. However, the phenomenon you’re likely pointing to is simply being more jaded as an adult
For me, it’s about context and scope. The wide open wonder of my youth has been replaced by little epiphanies of experience. A bite of really good food, or music, or a great joke can bring me a startling amount of joy. A lot of my awe has also been replaced by satisfaction and appreciation. Getting old sucks undeniably, but there are compensations.
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Are farts still funny? Then you’re good
For real though, you might be depressed. Talking to a therapist could help suss that out.
That is an ingenius litmus test!
Getting to the point in life where you realize how the sausage is made, packaged, marketed, distributed, sold, cooked, consumed, digested, defecated, flushed, mixed with other waste, and either separated into solids and liquids or dumped into the ocean will do that to you.
On top of what everyone else said (I especially super agree with experiencing new things), I can recommend art, either experiencing it, or making it. Art is basically all about trying to capture or recapture a specific feeling, by heightening it.
Maybe the smell of roses doesn’t move you much after all these years, but a well crafted poem, music, movie, or some video games (I guess Flower comes to mind for this particular example) can reignite some of that lost wonder. And if experiencing them isn’t enough, you can always go after those feelings yourself, and make your own art, trying to bring back the sensations you miss the most. Heck, learning to cook an old dish a relative or friend used to make can evoke long forgotten feelings, “art” is a vague term.
I’m both getting older and suffering from really bad depression, and this sort of thing has been helping me cope with this loss of feelings.
Fully recommend the psychedelics BUT it’s not for everyone.
Practice mindfulness through meditation.
Psychedelics do what that does but does so through explosive force, lol.
Mindfulness is so fundamentally critical to feeling alive again. That breeze still exists. The sound of the cicadas buzzing away is still there. The scent of rain still permeates.
Meditation isn’t going “ohmmmmm🧘”. It’s a practice of clearing your mind, and living through your senses. Discerning your existence through means other than thought.
When you were a kid, you didn’t have the capacity to only think like you do now. You were jumping between thought and raw sensory analysis. You were both free and grounded through your senses.
It’s about finding a balance that as a kid you couldn’t obtain, and that as an adult you have forsaken.
Good luck friend. Just know that you can get back to that.
Edit: I’d like to add that you practice until it’s second nature, and you become much more aware as a result. You won’t need to stop to smell those roses - they will grab your attention.
I’ve occasionally referred to psychedelics as ‘microwave Buddhism’
Hey OP, a lot of people are suggesting psilocybin or other psychedelics. If you’re interested you can ask questions about that in the !magic@wizanons.dev community. I moderate it but there are psychonauts there that know about this stuff who are friendly and helpful.
Joining. The therapeutic ketamine sub was one I’d recently joined and enjoyed before snoopocalypse. I’m in.
My friend was wondering how someone else could even get a hold of mushrooms or spores in secret, without having to use the mail, if some other rando was crazy enough to consider microdosing?
