Aging makes you more yourself
☀️ We’re back with the Medium Newsletter
Issue #230: silly days, weird color combos, and the “fundamental attribution error”
Ever since turning 38, my favorite line to deliver with confidence is: “Actually, I’m almost 40.” I smirk, ready to feed off people trying to shhh this fact away as if they were swatting a fly off my head. “But you look so young!!” And thank you, that was the point of this statement — my quest to look and feel younger as I round a new decade.
Aging is something I think about constantly. The World Health Organization has confirmed people are living longer, which makes me entertain the idea of taking The Substance even more. I think about aging when someone tells me about their high-interest savings account or that they need to call a roofer or that they just booked a trip to Japan or even that it’s a Tuesday night and they have plans. How old are they to be doing this stuff? Am I that age too? Have I passed that age? I need to contextualize myself as a single, childless renter in the midst of whatever story they’re telling me so I can feel slightly better about the clock ticking down to a colonoscopy appointment. My compulsion to defend the choices I’ve made is also not innate — comparing ourselves to others is actually a socially conditioned construct. Studies show there is a “strong correlation between frequent comparison and heightened levels of depression and anxiety” (about aging, among other things). It’s so fun.
However, just like therapist Crystal Jackson on Medium, part of me is ready for the “Freedom of the Feral Forties.” As Jackson writes, this is the decade for writing your own rules, getting weirder, and becoming even more yourself. “The clock cannot be stopped,” she explains, “I’m suddenly curious to see myself at all the ages I’m fortunate enough to reach.”
I’m also very aware that getting older comes with its downsides. My mom always says “there’s nothing golden about your golden years” and Rodney Lacroix’s “Countdown to Extinction: A Top Ten List of the Worst Parts of Getting Old” is proof (and it has me wondering if my mom is getting paid to ghostwrite these days).
The scariest thing about aging, to me, is not my lack of a Roth IRA but the compounding loss I experience each year. More and more parents of close and childhood friends are dying. Friends are leaving doctor’s offices with scary, ugly diagnoses. All the pets my friends got in their twenties are now crossing the rainbow bridge. I’ve never experienced as much tangential loss as I have this year alone. As coach Ronke Babajide, Ph.D., observes in “That Thing We Always Forget About Aging,” every day brings us closer to losing the people closest to us. A poignant read that reminds me how limited time is for those close to me the more we blow out the candles.
⚡ What else we’re reading…
- Evin Ibrahim and her husband, who is Syrian, react to the fall of former president Bashar al-Assad: “I actually feel myself wanting to help rebuild my country.” (Age of Empathy)
- Complementary colors (opposite on the color wheel, e.g. blue and orange) tend to dominate design, but “halfway color combos” (blue-green and purple) can feel more emotional and evocative. (Ruxandra Duru, Bootcamp)
- It’s easy to be cynical about blatantly commercial awareness days (today is Maple Syrup Day, FYI, and everything I can find about it sounds like SEO bait). But! Dan Brotzel spent 365 days celebrating fake holidays and it kind of changed his life? He leaned into the silliness of Talk Like a Pirate Day, took full advantage of Eat a Bagel Day, and used some Days as excuses to chat up people he’d never meet otherwise. “On their respective Days, I had wonderful conversations with all sorts: a hermit, a lighthouse keeper, a town crier, a stationery fetishist.” (Human Parts)
🧠 Your daily dose of practical wisdom
The “fundamental attribution error” is our human tendency to think everyone’s out to get us — basically, we overemphasize personal intentions and underemphasize how much everyone’s just responding to their circumstances. Most things are not about you.
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb, Carly Rose Gillis & Harris Sockel.
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