Age gets a lot of bad press in the society when it shouldn’t. We get better with age, as we grow in self awareness and understanding of our lives. Let us start appreciating life as it grows with the passing years.

Age is a thing in life. We can’t deny that. We all age with time and it is the reality of life. However, we don’t always have to feel bad about it because there are many things that actually improve with age.

You become more mature and understand life better. Fuck it, let’s just look at 10 things that get better as you age.

1. You are more self-aware as you age. My journey of self-awareness started in the middle of my thirties. Till then, I feel I was just busy doing the things that the society respects. Then, one day I realized that I have done so many things that the society respects and I am still not happy. What went wrong and that’s when I started looking inward and for things that make me who I am. I am 39 at the time of writing this, and I truly believe that my life has started only about 5 years back. As we age, we begin to understand ourselves better as people and that is a wonderful thing.

2. You learn to take care of your emotions better. When we children, we are a mess mostly because we don’t understand why feel the way we feel. However, as we age, with better self-awareness and understanding of our feelings, we learn to be more in charge of our emotions than we were as kids. It’s liberating.

3. You get to have more control over your life as you age. Think about it. We are dependent on our parents till we gain financial freedom and especially in India, if that happens, your parents run your lives. When you age, and gain financial freedom, you get to do what you want with your life, finally, and as a consequence have more control over your life.

4. You realize the importance of health as you age. Although I have been inclined towards fitness right from my twenties, I have realized that my desire to eat healthy and nutritious food has become more intense as I age. I think health is the most important thing in the world because if I have health, I can do anything but if I lose health, nothing would be doable anymore. As we age, realize the importance physical, mental and emotional health.

5. Your intellectual abilities get better as you age. The more you live, the more you get to learn about yourself and life. You understand life better, than you did as a child, and hence you grow intellectually as you age.

6. You get better with relationships. All of us want to be great at our relationships. However, we make mistakes about the kind of people we would be happy with, be it romantic relationships or friendships. As we age, we make mistakes on the way, and learn lessons. Those lessons are applied to the relationships in our future and hence we end up in happier relationships.

7. You gain financial freedom. Now, this depends on what age do different people attain their financial freedom. However, a sizeable number of people achieve financial freedom by their 50’s and a few do it even in their 40’s. Financial freedom is a great thing since it allows us to live our lives the way we want, and for most people it comes with age. There are exceptions in the world who are born with a silver or a gold or even a platinum spoon in their mouth. But, most of us have to work quite hard for it, and it takes time.

8. You find what you are passionate about. We don’t really live in a society where people are encouraged to find and pursue their passion. A few successful entrepreneurs are now talking about passion and encouraging people to follow it. However, for most people stuck in the everyday grind of life, finding their passion sounds like a utopian dream which is unachievable. However, as we age, we have more opportunities and time to pursue things we truly are good at, and are passionate about. Age is good thing that ways, no?

9. Maturity is a wonderful thing. Maturity is the opposite of innocence. Although innocence looks good to outsiders, it is largely ignorance since we know nothing about the world. As we age, we become more and more mature, and hence more conscious about the way we live life. There is no way we would be able to live lives if we all maintained our childlike innocence. Innocence, hence, is only meant for kids.

10. Our work lives become more meaningful as we age, gain more self-awareness and find our passions. Most people in the world don’t like their work, but given time, all of us realize things we are good at, and try to move our work towards those things. As an outcome, our work lives improve and they stop being painful.

11. We become more mindful as we age. We are not really conscious of time when we are young and carefree. However, as we age, we realize that time is the most important of all resources we have as human beings and hence we become more mindful and try to be present in the moment. Mindfulness is beautiful since it allows us to truly be present in the present moment.

12. As we age, we learn to accept ourselves more. Self-acceptance is an importance step to self-love and care. We can’t love and care for ourselves or anybody else unless we accept them. Therefore, once we accept ourselves we are liberated from the clutches of disapproval and the desire to change ourselves to the ways of the world. All of us are unique and different as people, and it takes effort to understand ourselves and be able to accept ourselves with who we are. Thankfully, as we age, we learn to do that. We don’t have a choice, after all.

13. Our choices in books, art, music improves. Just think about the kind of stuff you used to watch in your teenage vs. the kind of stuff you watch now. We learn about things as we age, and hence watch more meaningful and intense stuff we age. Casualness is a trait of the carefree and age frees us of it, since we now want to invest in things that truly matter.

14. We gain depth in character as we age. Depth is a beautiful thing and children don’t really have depth. Depth comes with trials and tribulations of life, learning those lessons and changing in the process. All of us go through people dying, disease, pain and several other lessons that life teaches us on the way. As an outcome, we become people who have seen life, and our personalities find depth, even if we don’t try it.

15. We are kinder as we grow in age. The more we get to live, the more we realize that the world has so much pain. There are so many people around the world who are poor, illiterate, and even hungry. We get kinder towards those people instead of hating them. We want to do something to help them. Age nurtures kindness.

16. We realize that we are not our bodies, as we age. When we are in our twenties and early 20’s, we feel that the body is an important thing about us and people. However, when the body starts to develop white hair on the head, and the skin is not as bright as it used to be, we realize that character and attitude to life are more important than the physical body. Yes, physical appearance still matter, but we outgrow them in our minds to realize that people are not their bodies.

17.  We don’t want to waste time anymore as we age. In addition to being mindful, you don’t want to waste time on anything that doesn’t add value to our lives since time is all we have. You can make more money, buy a new house, or a car, or whatever, but the time you lose, will never ever fucking come back.

18. We realize the importance of solitude. When we are young, we think we always need people around us to be happy. However, as we age, we realize the importance of thinking time, and the time that we spend only in our own company. That time is called solitude-chosen loneliness.

19. We learn to appreciate life, as we age. We learn to be grateful for the gift of life, and learn to appreciate the things we have been blessed with. The 20’s and even the 30’s rush by too soon in the quest to make something of our lives, and please a lot of people. As we hit 40’s and beyond, the things that truly matter start appearing on the top of our conscious mind- things like love, passion, meaning, which we didn’t have the time to think about earlier.

20. We are happier, as we age. I would like to argue that we are truly happier as we age. The realization about who we are, and the things that matter to us come to us with time. Although some people find worldly success quite early in their lives, but I do feel that even they are not able to appreciate all that they have unless they understand what things truly mean. It takes time to realize the meaning of things and why do they make us happy. Age makes us realize all of that. I believe that with all our mistakes made during the course of our lives, as we age, we are liberated and finally at some point, attain true and deep happiness.

A lot of people freak out about age, but it is not that bad a thing after all. In fact, in many ways, it is a good thing. We grow through the days we live, even when we make mistakes. All of us have different learning cycles and some of us grow faster than others. However, if we have the opportunity to live life, as we age, we have every reason to be glad and grateful about it.

Thank you for reading.

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I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.

Love,

Amarvani