Now I Know Better: 5 Things You Realize As You Grow Older

As kids, we’ve always wanted to be like adults. We couldn’t wait to grow up and do the things we couldn’t do when we were younger. Stay up late. Make money and spend it however we want to. Go to different places on our own. Go on road trips with our pals. We had a romanticized vision of adulthood, not realizing the different challenges that go with it. 

 

We didn’t think of the responsibilities that adulthood brings in life. Looking for the right homebuyer loan and making sure to make our mortgage payments on time. Taking care of the bills. Holding down a job and providing for our families. Saving money for a rainy day.

Indeed, growing older makes you realize there’s more to adulthood than the fantasies we had as kids. 

5 Realizations as You Grow Older

The clock is ticking

Many of us take for granted all the time we have on our hands, especially if we’re young. We like to think that we have all the time in the world for our pursuits — our plans and ambitions. But with each passing year, we realize how fleeting time really is. 

The pandemic made this quite clear to us as many people lost loved ones, people they made plans with, plans that can no longer be fulfilled. We realize that life is short and that every minute wasted is a minute that can never be recovered.

This is why we need to learn how to manage our time and make sure we live a healthy and balanced life. Hard work should be our standard, but it should never get in the way of other important things in life, especially time with family and friends. 

You’re a different person now compared to who you were a year ago

They say that change is the only constant thing in this world. The seasons change regularly. Trends come and go. Even the person you are today will change. If you take time to look back at your life, you’ll notice how much of a different person you are now from the one you used to be a year, five years, or ten years ago. And a lot of it doesn’t have anything to do with your physical appearance. 

Your worldview changes. Your personal taste and preference evolve. Even your values and convictions are bound to be different a few years from now. Maturity does that. 

Life is predictably unpredictable

While we all know that no one knows for certain what the future holds, one thing we start to realize is how life can be predictably unpredictable. We often experience this when our plans are all laid out, only to have life throw a monkey wrench and wreck our program. 

Unfortunately, there’s nothing else we can do when this happens, no matter how well you plan it out. Life has its way of making things happen the way it wants it to. And the only thing we can do about it is to adapt and roll with the punches. 

The things your parents said before are starting to make sense

Remember the times when our parents got on our last nerves because of the things they said or the unsolicited advice they gave? Well, guess what? The older you get, the more you agree with what your folks told you when you were younger. From something as simple as eating your breakfast and brushing your teeth to giving you advice on how to nail a job interview and telling you you’ve made the wrong relationship choices. 

We didn’t value their wisdom much during our youth because we thought we knew better, and their points of view are outdated. And then we grow older and face the things they warned us about. 

Adulthood ain’t all that

As kids, we always thought it would be cool to no longer have to take afternoon naps or sleep early. To us, being adults meant enjoying its perks and not being restricted to kiddie rules and restrictions. We earn money and buy the things we want. We go to places we couldn’t go to and do things we couldn’t. 

As we become older and face the responsibilities and different challenges that adulthood brings, we realize how easier and simpler life was when we were younger. And a lot of us want to enjoy life like a kid again whose only concern is what to play with and how to pass the time until the next meal. Yeah, being grown-up can be cool, but it’s not all that great

This is not to say that adulthood sucks. It has its ups as well as some downs. How you deal with the setbacks can set you up for a better life. How you look at things determines how far you will go in life. The important thing is we never lose sight of the simpler joys that childhood gave us without compromising our adult responsibilities. Life is a never-ending learning process. As long as we keep learning and growing, adulthood ain’t that bad.