How aging changes your perspective

Isn’t it weird? I remember being 22 and - usually - it feels like it wasn’t that long ago. But just change the perspective slightly and it feels like an eternity. So much has happened in between. So much hasn’t. Some things I can understand better now, others I basically refuse to understand. Some ideals are the same, others shifted. All things considered, getting older seems like a net benefit for me, though.

One thing I always wondered about was whether I’d become more conservative, the older I get. In a sense, I guess that’s what’s happening. In some regards, anyways. I see things much more critically nowadays. Much less tolerance for bullshit. Much more incentive to actually stand by my ideals and much less fucks given about anyone or anything. Other than the people and things I actually, really care about.

But that sharpened filter also comes with a downside: a tendency to become bitter about certain things. And nowhere is that more obvious than with social media.

I was amongst the first people in my social network to have accounts on all of the usual suspect-platforms. For a while I thought this might be the only way to actually get anywhere with my career. I’m surprised I ended up where I am now: I don’t see any reason to be active anymore. Not a single one.

Take LinkedIn. That’s the only account I still maintain. I’m not posting anything. I deleted all my posts. I’m just there so that people looking me up find something and don’t think I’m weird for not having an account. Yet, every time I login I can’t but notice the absolutely abysmal signal to noise ratio. A glorified contact manager with a hook to trigger people that have that incredible urge to self-promote. I was there, I guess, at some point. But it just feels so wrong, so completely against my nature. Are y’all just so fucking bored at work?

Just earlier today I was contemplating whether I should post a “Merry Xmas” on LinkedIn, just because I was in the mood. I didn’t even know what to write. Miles from being genuine. Just a “me too” thing. No value added. Just blowing bubbles in the ocean, to briefly become noticed by someone, just for the same bubbles to disappear in the turbulences of another big whale swimming by seconds after I pressed the “Post” button. So fucking useless.

The more distance I have from social media, the more I find it an absolutely peculiar, scary, weird development in human history. How we became caught up in it. How we became the asset in a global monetization scheme owned by a couple of corporations worth billions of dollars, whose sole purpose is to provide an echo chamber with targeted ads.

This and many other topics that are barely graspable and utterly complex are things that bother me nowadays. I’m much, much more concerned about the mid to long term than I was when I was 20. The simple realization of that sometimes leaves me with the need to listen to music that kicks off a nostalgic reaction.

But that same shift in perspective also recalibrated what “success” means to me. I remember that career and “getting somewhere” was once a thing I was actually concerned about. The egocentric version of future-angst. Maybe I actually “got somewhere” or I simply no longer care, because I know that it is far less important where I end up than where we end up as a collective. Today, mostly, I just want to be left to my own devices and do what I can do best while earning enough to have a comfortable situation.

I basically earn as much as I earned 16 years ago. I just work less nowadays. Time is worth more than money, a hundred times over. And the fact that I can actually do that makes me happy, more than anything.

It allows me to get bored, which in turn fuels looking for new things that seem like a waste of time from the point of view of a “heavily self optimised person”. Yet it fuels my interest to put my toes into topics I would certainly not even come across if I was grinding 24/7. Time alone allows us to look at things that we would normally not even notice. I wish everybody could do that. I really do. And it leaves me sad to realise that I’m probably part of a minority.

I learn new things all the time, I’m up to date in my field, I know what’s what in that regard. Because it’s fun and because I can. The deep realization that one is amongst the most privileged people on this planet, living where I live, doing what I do and getting paid for that — it’s humbling.

It provides a warm blanket of feeling content, on one side. While it makes me realize even more that we are far, far from the point where I once optimistically tended to search for at the horizon. Some naive idealism certainly has been removed over the years.

I think I learned more details about history in the past 10 years than in the previous 30 combined. Just because I had more time to actually do it. And it left me with a far more grounded and informed view of current events. Or how to classify current events and how to put minor things in perspective, while developing kind of less biased world view.

Even though the whole burn-out episode left me with a subjective feeling of slightly less mental absorption capacity (it got way better 2-3 years after the fact though), I’m still going for new stuff regularly. Another thing that makes me happy and relaxed for the future.

One more thing that vastly changed in the past few years is that I tend to voice my opinion much less filtered and much more honest than I used to. I don’t beat around the bush anymore, I’m willing to take the consequences for what I say and where I stand on certain topics. And yet, I’m more than happy to receive a different opinion and get food for thought.

I always had trouble with that when I was younger. Somehow I thought I had to adjust myself to fit some kind of criteria that I thought was expected from me. I didn’t want to piss anyone off, completely avoiding any sort of conflict. The subconscious need to be “part of something” was much more pronounced. Nowadays, I don’t give a fuck about what people think of me anymore. Very liberating.

To 40, then. Less naive, more tired, more free. I’ll take the trade.