Wisdom With Aging

Howard Stern interviewed Jerry Seinfeld and produced this dialogue:

HS: If you could go back to younger Jerry, would you go back there?
JS: Would I want to be young again? No.
HS: You’re happy where you are?
JS: I think if you’re a little lucky in life, you should enjoy getting older. You’re going to see more.When you’re young you can’t see what’s going on so well. You get older, you walk into a room, you meet this guy and that guy and you see exactly what’s going on here. I love that and I don’t care about the physical deterioration. That’s part of it.

 

Aging is OK

I like Howard but Jerry is more evolved than Howard. I personally love that Howard has gone to therapy for decades and Jerry thinks it’s complete hogwash. You can hear a lot of the therapy at work in Howard’s life and it’s refreshing to hear from a guy like Jerry who has it so together without it.

I lead with this interview because this is one part of life that I’m noticing. If you read my post yesterday, you’d probably think I was a dick if you ever answered one of the math problems on Facebook. This isn’t a post I would have ever written years ago because I have never perceived the world as I do now. I look at life, specifically ads, differently than I did earlier. I’m very aware now of people who I feel are taking advantage of situations. This happens as you experience more life, you start to galvanize yourself to spots that you deem negative (and then critique them in your blog read by dozens).

I like thinking about how I thought about life when I was younger. This particular example came into my head when I noticed that every one of my pair of boxers was inside out after doing laundry. Now I know that if I just took the boxers and turned them the right way before I put them in the hamper, this would not be a problem. However, even after hundreds of times doing laundry, I still don’t. This made me wonder about getting smarter with age. It also made me remember this example when I was heading off to college. I had never done my laundry before and my plan was to ask a hot girl how to do laundry to meet new people. I look back on that now and wonder why on Earth a girl would ever want a mentally handicapped guy who didn’t know how to do his own laundry.

A final move where I think I’m being clever but am really an idiot was last night. I wanted to eat some Chick-Fil-A so I drove 15 minutes to get it and there was a 10 car back up in the drive through. I parked my car, was in an out in 3 minutes, and was proud of how much time I saved. I then drove 12 minutes back and parked my car. As I got out, I thought, “I spent 27 minutes driving to pick up chicken (and 1st class lemonade), what a waste of time.”

What I’m pointing out is that you are always experiencing more life and you’re worldly views are always changing. When I was 20 I didn’t care what was going on outside my state. My world was a 2 mile radius. Now I’m in my 30’s and my world has expanded nationally and globally (to a small degree). By the time I’m 40 I’ll look back and say, “remember when I hardly ever traveled in my 30’s.”

I like aging. Sure I wish I was 25 again and I have plenty of regrets that I know I will never get the chance to act on again but that’s ok. I am who I am and these were the choices I made to get me to this point. Everyone can choose to live life their own way. There isn’t 1 right way. Literally there are 0 “right” ways. It’s what YOU want to do.