That high school was the easiest and most consequences free time of my life and literally all the huge amounts of stress I was under was 100% petty high school social shit that could not have mattered less.
Here’s some facts that I wish someone had been able to convince me of.
– Unless it’s a felony or effects what ever career/education plans you have after High School, literally nothing in High School matters.
– Nobody cares what happens to “the cool kid” or “the popular girl” or “the weird kid” after High School and nobody normal is keeping tabs on these people to see how they are doing years later. The only people who care about or even think about High School by the time they are 25 are “I peaked in high school people” and they are sad.
Your parents, friends, and loved ones want to spend time with you and vice versa, but they are forced to work, have other responsibilities and need time to themselves.
The time flying thing is something that you can only experience. Of course I remember my parents, teachers etc. telling me about time flying but it’s crazy how fast time flies and how it seems to accelerate as you get older.
Adult life is waking up, getting ready to go to work, going to work, working, coming home, making dinner, eating dinner… then you have 4 hours left to do everything else, clean, spend time with kids/family or date, watch tv, catch up on things, whatever. You get 2-3 weeks vacation… if you are lucky, per year. That’s it for the next 45 years. Work, sleep, 4 hours of time per weekday… So experience the world while you are young and can without being tied down to a job/career. And for the love of g, pick a job you don’t hate. Don’t get stuck doing a low wage job that you hate. At least find a job you somewhat like or else you will spend 1/3 of your life hating life.
That my parents really sacrificed a lot to make me seem just as good as all the other kids at my primary shcool.
I’m from a fairly poor family in comparison to all the other kids that went to that school and my parents gave up a lot to make sure I never seemed any worse off.
I really did not deserve them thinking back on it.
How much harder it is to recover and heal from minor things, how much your body will hurt if you don’t take care of it. Use it or lose it happens more quickly than you predict.
For working class folk life is just working til you die. Unless you’re extremely lucky and get to retire a few years before you die, when you’re to old to do all the shit you wanted to do when you were younger.
When you’re 15, a year is 1/15th of your life. When you’re 70, it’s 1/70th. Literally every year is a smaller and smaller piece of the pie and experienced as such.
98% chance your first love will become a distant memory. They aren’t the “once in a lifetime” Romeo and Juliet love you think they are. Yes, billions of others have felt like you. Yes, your parents actually DO understand.
My first love was a decent enough person but NOT for me. I wish her no ill will but I legit thought the world was ending when we broke up. Nowadays I have fonder memories of my childhood hamster than of her.
investing and putting cash into a retirement fund – i heard an awful story that made me literally have an existential crisis for like literally 4 days straight.
Pretty much, some dude in his mid 30’s barely had 34k in his retirement fund and made a post saying as much and asking “can i still retire normally” and almost everyone was grilling him and saying things along the line of
“at your rate? you cant even hope to retire in your 60’s or even early 70’s”
Kinda terrified the fuck outta me so over the past few months ive been trying to straighten out my finances – moreso those which will secure my future.
Definitely how time flies and how you’ll long to be young again.
You can’t really understand either until you experience them. But since our experience of time is linear, we can’t “learn” from that experience so to speak.
We can’t go back and really relish every slow moving moment of being a kid. We can’t go back at all. I think that’s why this one hits so hard.
The years start coming, and they don’t stop coming.
when your a teen 5 years is forever then your twenties and thirties seemingly go by in the blink of an eye 40 now and i dont see things slowing down anytime soon
I remember discovering that the people in charge at my job were just winging it, and didn’t know more than I did how to solve problems and run things. .
You ever hear in movies during a stressful situation people ask the protagonist, “do you have kids?”
It’s not until you have your own kid that you understand they’re asking because, only when you have a kid, you’ll know the lengths a parent will go to keep their kid safe.
Someone without a kid might think they understand but no, you really don’t.
That our parents not getting us the things that we wanted when we were kids did not mean they were mean or bad parents. It meant they couldn’t afford it.
How much my mom did for me. Realized it at age 22 when I had a 2 month old. Just one of those things you can’t realize until you’re in the thick of it.
Both literally and figuratively. It’s not so much about yourself, but that everyone and everything you love and hate will disappear, so enjoy it as much as you can starting right now or let it go as fast as possible.
“Dad can’t right now, he’s working”. Until you’re the one giving up family time to provide for your family, it’s hard to understand it’s the last thing someone would ever voluntarily do.
I have the feeling more often that I’m living in a totally different reality to the one I was in as a kid and teenager, even in my 20s. I guess this is not an oft talked about thing, certainly not a fact of course, but perhaps others can relate. I am mid forties now.
Abusing your body with shit food, too much alcohol, zero sleep, stupid hours at work, incorrect lifting equipment, insufficient PPE, crashing cars and motorcycles – might feel fine at 20, but wait till you get older.
I’m 47 and everything hurts, I’m deaf and half-blind, pre-diabetic with stupidly high blood pressure.
Look after yourself.
And marry in haste, repent at leisure.
First marriage cost me half a million. Everyone told me it was a terrible idea. Turns out they were correct.
Homosexuality. Like, nobody told me about it. I’m all in the community and aware now, but I don’t think anyone explained when i was younger. It’s hard to just start understanding sexuality as an adult
Used to get so annoyed when I’d hear my parents tell the same story to the same people over and over without realizing. Now, I start every sentence with, “Stop me if I’ve already told you this!”
That having a good night’s sleep, doing some exercise and eating well actually DOES make you feel better. All those times Mum told me to just get outside in the fresh air… she was right, man.
How expensive peace of mind actually is. Like, you’ll gladly pay extra for convenience or silence once you’re older and it’s wild how normal that becomes.
When I was 27 my first boss was 37 and I thought he was so dumb and I was so smart. After all I just got out of college, academia. What could he possible know. By the time I was 37 I realized how dumb 27 year Olds are and then at 47 I realized you learn a whole lot about the world and life every decade. Life experience teaches you way more than you think.
That your parents may not have the same level of education you have, but they’ve tried their best with the resources, experience, and capacity they had to raise you.
How much someone loves their kids. You don’t know the love for a child until you have one yourself. When I was younger around 15 I had to help raise my siblings. I never wanted kids because I had already raised kids. I felt I wasn’t missing anything. But as I got older and I finally did have one child I realized there is no other love on earth that compares to the love a parent has for their child. (Most parents anyways) It took me having my son to realize that.
I think it’s a blessing & curse that when you’re young you feel deeply, especially in young love. But once I got a little older & got more confident, it hurt me to think about how much i let some guys hurt me & how sad I felt at “losing them”. I really wish I had been smart enough to walk away when it was time
It’s not embarrassing to be seen out in public with your parents as a teenager. As you grow older they are also growing older. Spend time with your parents when they’re still alive and well.
Life is not always fair. You’re not entitled to anything in life. You CANNOT demand anything from life. You can try, wish, and believe, but you can never expect things to happen your way.
Working life. I thought 9 to 5 wasn’t that bad until I did my college intern which was 8 to 6, with a 1h 30 min commute to work and back home each time. It sucks
Comments
That high school was the easiest and most consequences free time of my life and literally all the huge amounts of stress I was under was 100% petty high school social shit that could not have mattered less.
Here’s some facts that I wish someone had been able to convince me of.
– Unless it’s a felony or effects what ever career/education plans you have after High School, literally nothing in High School matters.
– Nobody cares what happens to “the cool kid” or “the popular girl” or “the weird kid” after High School and nobody normal is keeping tabs on these people to see how they are doing years later. The only people who care about or even think about High School by the time they are 25 are “I peaked in high school people” and they are sad.
Your parents, friends, and loved ones want to spend time with you and vice versa, but they are forced to work, have other responsibilities and need time to themselves.
The time flying thing is something that you can only experience. Of course I remember my parents, teachers etc. telling me about time flying but it’s crazy how fast time flies and how it seems to accelerate as you get older.
Memento mori, memento vivere.
To be adventurous in your younger years. Age and regret comes fast, the years flick by pretty quickly.
Geometry
Repressed abuse can pop up in your mind at any point in your future. Even if you haven’t thought about it in literal decades. Suddenly, there you are.
Youth is wasted on the young.
Adult life is waking up, getting ready to go to work, going to work, working, coming home, making dinner, eating dinner… then you have 4 hours left to do everything else, clean, spend time with kids/family or date, watch tv, catch up on things, whatever. You get 2-3 weeks vacation… if you are lucky, per year. That’s it for the next 45 years. Work, sleep, 4 hours of time per weekday… So experience the world while you are young and can without being tied down to a job/career. And for the love of g, pick a job you don’t hate. Don’t get stuck doing a low wage job that you hate. At least find a job you somewhat like or else you will spend 1/3 of your life hating life.
To quote my grandmother, “they waste youth on the young”. I’m a Boomer and now I understand what she meant
That my parents really sacrificed a lot to make me seem just as good as all the other kids at my primary shcool.
I’m from a fairly poor family in comparison to all the other kids that went to that school and my parents gave up a lot to make sure I never seemed any worse off.
I really did not deserve them thinking back on it.
School is so much easier than working/adulting
How much harder it is to recover and heal from minor things, how much your body will hurt if you don’t take care of it. Use it or lose it happens more quickly than you predict.
Money actually does NOT grow on trees.
We have food at home
For working class folk life is just working til you die. Unless you’re extremely lucky and get to retire a few years before you die, when you’re to old to do all the shit you wanted to do when you were younger.
Time moves faster when you’re older.
When you’re 15, a year is 1/15th of your life. When you’re 70, it’s 1/70th. Literally every year is a smaller and smaller piece of the pie and experienced as such.
98% chance your first love will become a distant memory. They aren’t the “once in a lifetime” Romeo and Juliet love you think they are. Yes, billions of others have felt like you. Yes, your parents actually DO understand.
My first love was a decent enough person but NOT for me. I wish her no ill will but I legit thought the world was ending when we broke up. Nowadays I have fonder memories of my childhood hamster than of her.
investing and putting cash into a retirement fund – i heard an awful story that made me literally have an existential crisis for like literally 4 days straight.
Pretty much, some dude in his mid 30’s barely had 34k in his retirement fund and made a post saying as much and asking “can i still retire normally” and almost everyone was grilling him and saying things along the line of
“at your rate? you cant even hope to retire in your 60’s or even early 70’s”
Kinda terrified the fuck outta me so over the past few months ive been trying to straighten out my finances – moreso those which will secure my future.
Time flies.
Definitely how time flies and how you’ll long to be young again.
You can’t really understand either until you experience them. But since our experience of time is linear, we can’t “learn” from that experience so to speak.
We can’t go back and really relish every slow moving moment of being a kid. We can’t go back at all. I think that’s why this one hits so hard.
The years start coming, and they don’t stop coming.
How fast our kiddos grow up. I definitely have perspective now.
It’s who you know, not what you know. Personal connections and networking matter more than competence
Maintaining a reasonable amount of money in the thousands at all times in a bank account, is essential for personal freedom as an adult.
The mirror doesn’t tell the truth about who I am.
As you get older, the days get longer and the years get shorter.
He does not think you’re “mature for your age”. He is a pedophile. What he is doing is wrong and you are in danger.
You could have screamed it in my face and I wouldn’t have believed you. He was 25 and I was 12.
when your a teen 5 years is forever then your twenties and thirties seemingly go by in the blink of an eye 40 now and i dont see things slowing down anytime soon
I remember discovering that the people in charge at my job were just winging it, and didn’t know more than I did how to solve problems and run things. .
You ever hear in movies during a stressful situation people ask the protagonist, “do you have kids?”
It’s not until you have your own kid that you understand they’re asking because, only when you have a kid, you’ll know the lengths a parent will go to keep their kid safe.
Someone without a kid might think they understand but no, you really don’t.
That our parents not getting us the things that we wanted when we were kids did not mean they were mean or bad parents. It meant they couldn’t afford it.
“Attractive” and “Pretty” aren’t synonyms.
Finances and money
How much my mom did for me. Realized it at age 22 when I had a 2 month old. Just one of those things you can’t realize until you’re in the thick of it.
The older you get, the faster time flies
It’s true when they say “you look just like your [mom/dad] when they were your age”.
My parents weren’t just pissed for no reason all the time
We can’t afford it.
Back pain
Everyone dies.
Both literally and figuratively. It’s not so much about yourself, but that everyone and everything you love and hate will disappear, so enjoy it as much as you can starting right now or let it go as fast as possible.
You are not invincible.
Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long; and in the end it is only with yourself.
Time is precious.
You’ll miss your knees when they’re gone
Time. Energy. Money. You only get two at a time.
T&E – childhood. No money.
E&M – middle age. No time.
T&M – old age. No energy.
Bad knees really will ruin everything
It is what it is.
That adults don’t know everything & are still struggling to figure life out no matter the age.
That some people haven’t processed their trauma yet and are just plain assholes.
The primary lesson being that you shouldn’t try to change people, no matter if you love them or not.
Sometimes you just have to walk away and that shit hurts more than just about anything I’ve felt so far.
you will miss sleep when you are old.
You’re not as fat as you think you are.
“Dad can’t right now, he’s working”. Until you’re the one giving up family time to provide for your family, it’s hard to understand it’s the last thing someone would ever voluntarily do.
I have the feeling more often that I’m living in a totally different reality to the one I was in as a kid and teenager, even in my 20s. I guess this is not an oft talked about thing, certainly not a fact of course, but perhaps others can relate. I am mid forties now.
Abusing your body with shit food, too much alcohol, zero sleep, stupid hours at work, incorrect lifting equipment, insufficient PPE, crashing cars and motorcycles – might feel fine at 20, but wait till you get older.
I’m 47 and everything hurts, I’m deaf and half-blind, pre-diabetic with stupidly high blood pressure.
Look after yourself.
And marry in haste, repent at leisure.
First marriage cost me half a million. Everyone told me it was a terrible idea. Turns out they were correct.
Homosexuality. Like, nobody told me about it. I’m all in the community and aware now, but I don’t think anyone explained when i was younger. It’s hard to just start understanding sexuality as an adult
The joys of menopause symptoms.
Used to get so annoyed when I’d hear my parents tell the same story to the same people over and over without realizing. Now, I start every sentence with, “Stop me if I’ve already told you this!”
That having a good night’s sleep, doing some exercise and eating well actually DOES make you feel better. All those times Mum told me to just get outside in the fresh air… she was right, man.
Your parents also didn’t know what they were doing. They were just young adults figuring it out as they went and doing their best.
Your quality of life depends about 100% on how much money you have
That days are long and years are short, especially when you have kids
That you need to love your parents for who they are and forgive them for what they aren’t. There’s a point where you learn to let all the anger go.
Life is not fair
Mine was getting sick and still having to work
People don’t change
That we are not a meritocracy.
Your parents are doing the best they can the only way they know how.
And yes that means they might just be not that great, or even monumentally shit at some or all of it.
Sits up … “Why does everything hurt? Again?!?!?!?”
How expensive peace of mind actually is. Like, you’ll gladly pay extra for convenience or silence once you’re older and it’s wild how normal that becomes.
Never date someone you couldn’t see yourself marrying.
Don’t be in a rush to grow up.
How my mom was 100% correct about each person I dated. Whether they were an actual good person or just using me. And she was right, I could do better.
One day you will miss hearing your grandma’s stories, so spend more time with her.
Parenting a rowdy child
Just how bad stress can get
How hard it is to live in the adult world
When I was 27 my first boss was 37 and I thought he was so dumb and I was so smart. After all I just got out of college, academia. What could he possible know. By the time I was 37 I realized how dumb 27 year Olds are and then at 47 I realized you learn a whole lot about the world and life every decade. Life experience teaches you way more than you think.
How important family is. Money less.
That your parents may not have the same level of education you have, but they’ve tried their best with the resources, experience, and capacity they had to raise you.
That growing up sucks. But at the same time it can be quite beautiful.
How much someone loves their kids. You don’t know the love for a child until you have one yourself. When I was younger around 15 I had to help raise my siblings. I never wanted kids because I had already raised kids. I felt I wasn’t missing anything. But as I got older and I finally did have one child I realized there is no other love on earth that compares to the love a parent has for their child. (Most parents anyways) It took me having my son to realize that.
That adults don’t actually have it all figured out, they’re just winging it with more stress and less sleep.
Health is wealth
That no matter how much you work at it not happening, you will feel a physical decline as you get old. When you’re young you can’t imagine it.
Theres food at home, you can’t ignore taking care of yourself.
“That’s not love”
I think it’s a blessing & curse that when you’re young you feel deeply, especially in young love. But once I got a little older & got more confident, it hurt me to think about how much i let some guys hurt me & how sad I felt at “losing them”. I really wish I had been smart enough to walk away when it was time
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
It really is because I said so
It’s not embarrassing to be seen out in public with your parents as a teenager. As you grow older they are also growing older. Spend time with your parents when they’re still alive and well.
The values of naps and silence.
Why people don’t generally put much stock in what a 20 something year old thinks. Looking back, damn I had know idea what I didn’t know about life.
Life is not always fair. You’re not entitled to anything in life. You CANNOT demand anything from life. You can try, wish, and believe, but you can never expect things to happen your way.
Working life. I thought 9 to 5 wasn’t that bad until I did my college intern which was 8 to 6, with a 1h 30 min commute to work and back home each time. It sucks