Being immune to the vagaries of pop culture and being pleasantly baffled when celebs make the news and you have no fucking idea who they are.
It’s also kind of wild because a lot of the really, really famous young people look entirely the opposite of the super-good-looking A-listers of the past. Guess its great that the younger generation seem less superficial than we were, but my programming struggles to process it when I see some pasty, odd looking dweeb and find out they’re outstreamng the Beatles or whatever.
as a woman: less street harassment.
You’ve got a lot of good stories to tell.
Having habits that you have honed to benefit you and having enough experience to develop forethought.
Experiencing all the various pain you only ever read about.
Oh, wait…
Turning 40 freaked me out a bit, but it hasn’t been that bad, outside of the whole “collapsing society” thing that’s been going on the last several years. I have a wonderful wife and kid, chickens, a dog, a cat with a heart full of disdain, and two dorky cars. I have good neighbors, a decent job, I honestly feel kinda guilty for how well I’ve been doing since I turned 40.
It’s almost over.
Most of the advantages don’t come from being over 40, but rather, from the experience of having lived over 40 years. What you have is knowledge and perspective. You can make better choices, fall into fewer traps. It’s that “wisdom” thing you may have heard of.
Also, as most people over 40 have been working for some time now, many of us (though definitely not all) have reached a different phase of their life financially. In my 20s, when things went wrong it was generally like “well, this is my life now”, but in my 40s when something goes wrong it’s more often like “ok, how much will it cost for this problem to go away?”. And don’t forget, with all of that wisdom we have, sometimes we can just solve the problem, but when that won’t work, throwing money at problems is generally effective.
Finally, I think someone already said it, but it’s worth repeating. You stop giving a shit about a lot of things, and it’s liberating. It feels like honesty and confidence and contentment.
This is the right answer.
Mid 40 here.
I’m hard pressed for advantages. I care less for opinions of others, but also feel immense frustration that those exact opinions influence my life too often.
I appreciate many things more because I have the experience to know how much effort they were, but also lost my fascination amd feeling of wonder.
I think it is not an issue with being older as such. It is the time we live in.
Struggles increasing while the body and mind are decreasing.
You don’t have to wait as long to die.
You no longer fear death, you yearn for it
As a 45 year old white man, I feel much more comfortable in giving my opinion and uneducated wisdom to others.
gathers around for the mansplaining
I am the sole man having lunch break with a group of women.
Whenever they start talking about how disgusting beards are, which is surprisingly more common that it ought to be, they always come to the same conclusion: Beards are nice if the man “keeps it”, by groming, cleaning, cutting, brushing, shaving the stubble and so on. A good beard is a plus, a bad beard is negative. And so they always make sure to point out that they don’t mean me, because I’m one of the guys with a good beard.
They’re all simultaneously looking at me, judging my beard and agreeing that this is the acceptable kind of beard, looking for my input and begging for my mansplanation.
However I just nod, and say “yeah yeah mm.mm. you have a point”. I don’t actually let them in on my secret to my “acceptable beard”, because what the fuck are they to do with that anyway? They don’t have beards.
Honestly, the only disadvantage is that you can start to feel your body breaking down.
Everything else just gets better. You’re wiser, smarter, more confident, less bothered, and you have fewer fucks to give.
And honestly, I look hotter now than I did in my twenties or thirties.
If only the world didn’t keep on getting worse every year.
if you do put in the work you can feel better than when you were younger.
you see all this carastrophic obesity going on/ insomnia/stress and its no wonder people are feeling shit all the time. you can feel your body breaking down before 40.
not like youre going to reverse aging but you can at least give yourself and your loved ones a break from dealing with something like an early stroke or unable to physically care for yourself for a significant part of your life.
Yeah, I’m trying to get better at that. More exercise, more stretching, more vegetables in my diet. It’s a process, but I’m starting to feel the difference.
Awesome! same. agreed it is a process. I kind of wish this kind of thing was more normalized so that it would feel less like a massive adjustment of shaking off the sugar/salt/fat/sitting/drama addictions imposed by so much of the media and capitalism.
Seconded. In the last 12 months, my eyesight has taken a turn and I am not sleeping as well. Less focus, forgetting more things, having to ask, “What?” way more often.
The focus might be brain rot… Need to get off Lemmy.
Emotional regulation. Better pay, if you have been able to work consistently. Kids older, easier to deal with. Happier, and can make better decisions because we are not so hotheaded.
I agree, I really cringe at emotional social choices I made 20 years ago.
However, I think the better pay is because I have 17 years experience in my field. If I started today, I wouldn’t earn the same because I wouldn’t yet be performing at my current capacity. It’s easier because we went through the suck already.
Same. Experience is why the pay gets better and getting experience does suck, but all those mistakes and problems pay off in knowledge and judgement.
People think you know more than you do.
Not giving a shit about so much stuff.
