I’m not that old. I’m just over 40. But, I’ve found that in the past few years, things have changed for me in a few ways. And in all cases, they changed overnight. Following are 5 of those things.
1. My Looks From Head To Toe Changed Overnight
I knew I was going to look different as I aged, but I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.
One day I was looking in the mirror and saw my wrinkle-free face and then the next day I looked in and saw permanent wrinkle lines. Permanent! They wouldn’t go away!
I guess it must just happen overnight like that to everyone. There has to be that one moment where that forehead line stops bouncing back to smooth skin and just stays as an indent.
I’ve experienced that moment on my forehead, around my eyes, and down by my mouth… but only on the left side of my mouth. The right side is wrinkle-free, and that’s a whole other frustration.
Also, as a woman, no matter how perky your breasts are, they are going to start being less perky eventually. And this seemed to happen overnight too.
2. I Suddenly Felt Older
All throughout my 20s and 30s, my friends talked about how old they felt. I could never understand it. I felt young. I was young. I never, ever had a feeling of being old.
But one day after my 40th birthday, I suddenly felt like my life was almost over. This happened overnight.
I woke up. I did some math. I suddenly felt like half of my life was gone. I started panicking. And I fell into a state of extreme sadness.
I never thought I would feel old. But it happened in a heartbeat.
3. I Instantly Felt More Regret
Because I felt older, regret popped up.
Suddenly all those days spent watching TV felt like wasted time. I was mad at myself for wasting what I felt was 20 years of my life.
This regret is something that is very hard to shake. When I feel it, I try to tell myself, “You have done some awesome things and you have time to do some more awesome things.” But, sometimes, my focus goes on all the wasted time and how I’ll never get that back.
I wish there was a delete button for the feeling of regret. It’s the worst feeling and it is such a waste of time. It literally causes you to create more moments where you do nothing productive and live to regret.
4. I Suddenly Became Extremely Worried About My Future
Because I felt so young, I felt like I had years ahead of me to save money for my future.
But, one day, I woke up in a panic with a bunch of questions I had never asked before.
How will we save enough money to take care of us if we can’t work?
What will happen if we get sick?
What will happen if we both can’t work?
The questions went on and on and on and it induced a serious panic about our future.
We’ve had to do some serious research and planning because of it.
5. Big Issues In The World Touch Me In A Deeper Way
I’ve always been someone who doesn’t get too upset about the big issues in the world. I’ve never had a big opinion one way or the other on most things. I realized at a young age that this was hindering my conversation skills because other people would get into long conversations about big issues while I would sit back and daydream about something other than the subject.
In other words, you couldn’t get me into a debate for the first half of my life because I simply wasn’t passionate enough about issues to debate them. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I’ve never liked the fact that people or animals suffer. I just didn’t educate myself enough on certain issues to really understand the depth of what’s going on and form an opinion.
That changed overnight.
For instance, one day I woke up and heard something that made me pissed about how animals in the food industry were being treated. I’ve been a vegetarian my whole life and it was never because of the suffering of animals. I didn’t like where meat came from, and I wasn’t happy for the animals being used as meat, but the suffering that animals went through was not the reason I didn’t eat meat.
One day, though, it became more about that. I started doing my research and the more I learned, the more pissed I got. Now, their suffering is tragic to me. That’s one of the reasons being vegan is so easy for me.
In short, things happening in the world touch me in a deeper way than they used to.
This could be because I’m always working on my personal growth and ignorance is a hard thing to maintain when you are doing that. I’ve found that when you are learning, growing, educating yourself, and applying new techniques to your life, your awareness opens up and you take in much more information than you used to. But, no matter why it happened, getting older was definitely a factor in it.
