The Cellar - What an idiot I was!

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- - What an idiot I was! (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=33731)

I have a somewhat puzzling relationship with ageing.

I hope that I'm a bit more worldly wise than I was say, two or three decades ago, but I never look back and compare distinct ages with the present.

I think that most people will have more life events than me on which to pin a particular age, so perhaps that has something to do with it.

There's been a few knocks and bruises and occasions when the effluvia has interfaced with the air conditioning, but broadly speaking nothing significant that I can nail down to a definite age.

As for learning by experience,* well I've always been aware of the risks of acting in haste, consequences of actions etc, and that awareness becomes more acute by the year.

Can timidity be far behind?

*Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

(Oscar Wilde)

Lower resilience and limited recovery time play a bigger role with age.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce (Post 1015330)

Lower resilience and limited recovery time play a bigger role with age.

As does not giving as much of a shit about shit as one used to. I count that as a big bonus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glinda (Post 1015453)

As does not giving as much of a shit about shit as one used to. I count that as a big bonus.

An outlook on life which has an honourable pedigree.

Arthur Balfour (Prime Minister 1902-1905) said "Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all".

I'd have voted for him. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glinda (Post 1015453)

As does not giving as much of a shit about shit as one used to. I count that as a big bonus.

Too wise or too tired?

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigV (Post 1015487)

Too wise or too tired?

A little of both, I suppose. :rolleyes:

I was a total idiot and a complete emotional dunce when I was a teenager. I think I've improved with age, but I still have my demons. Nobody is perfect, or will ever be. That's part of what makes us human I believe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undertoad (Post 1015037)

When I was 16 years old, I thought about the person I was at age 14; and the 16-year-old me thought, what an idiot I was back then.

16-year-old me knew everything 14-year-old me didn't understand. (But 16-year-old me didn't know what he didn't know. Which was tons.)

This has gone on my whole life. I'm 54 now, and I look back at me at 45 and I think, damn, wow, what a fuckup.

But I know, 45 looks at 35, and says, oh, the things you don't know. Oh, the pain you are due!

35 looks at 25, and says, wow, what made you think you were special? You were mentally ill.

Everybody, or just me?

Quote:

When I grow up to be a man
Will I dig the same things that turn me on as a kid?
Will I look back and say that I wish I hadn't done what I did?
Will I joke around and still dig those sounds
When I grow up to be a man?
Will I look for the same things in a woman that I dig in a girl?
(Fourteen, fifteen)
Will I settle down fast or will I first wanna travel the world?
(Sixteen, seventeen)
Now I'm young and free, but how will it be?
When I grow up to be a man?
Will my kids be proud or think their old man is really a square?
(Eighteen, nineteen)
When they're out having fun yeah, will I still wanna have my share?
(Twenty, twenty-one)
Will I love my wife for the rest of my life?
When I grow up to be a man?
What will I be when I grow up to be a man?
Won't last forever
It's kind of sad
Won't last forever
It's kind of sad

Turns out, they got a song for that...