I remember experiencing the world much more vividly when I was a little boy.
I would step outside on an autumn evening and feel joy as the cool breeze rustled the leaves and caressed my skin. In the summers, I would listen to the orchestra of insects buzzing around me. I would waddle out of the cold swimming pool and the most wonderful shiver would cascade out of me as I peed in the bathroom. In the winters, I would get mesmerized by the simple sound of my boots crunching the snow under me.
These were not experiences that I actively sought out. They just happened. I did not need to stop to smell the figurative roses, the roses themselves would stop me in my tracks.
As I got older, I started feeling less and less and thinking more and more.
I’ve tried meditation, recreation, vacation, resignation, and medication. Some of these things have helped but I am still left wondering… is this a side effect of getting older? Or is there something wrong with me?
I am no doctor but I remember hearing one of the warning signs of depression can be the absence of feeling. It is certainly one of mine.
Ehh…I disagree with this if we are specifically talking about what the OP is referring to.
When you’re a child, everything is new, making all of it exciting. For example…as a child, OP had only experienced winter a few times. As an adult, they’ve experienced countless winters. It becomes routine instead of new and so it fades into the background. And with adult obligations to worry about, we don’t have that worry free child mind that can drift off like that. It’s just part of getting older.
OP, sometimes it’s worth making a conscious decision to stop and take a moment to notice and experience your surroundings. There’s a thunderstorm outside? Grab a warm cup of coffee and just try to watch and listen for a moment. If possible, open a window (that won’t let rain in) or sit outside under an awning and just take in all of your senses. Go out for a walk without any music and without using your phone. Try to look at the trees and birds around you and take it in. Smell the air…has the grass been recently cut? Has it rained recently? Is there mud around? Is someone nearby grilling some food? Are there leaves on the ground? Try stepping on one. Do they crunch or are they soft and wet?
As a child, everything is new. As an adult, it’s routine and boring. But you can still manage to capture a small bit of this feeling back if you actively decide to stop from time to time and consciously try to take in your surroundings for a moment. Stop and try to feel all of your senses.
You can never make these feelings new again, but sometimes I find some satisfaction in watching and listening to the world around me.
Both perspectives are true and effort is the key in either case.
Not everyone is destined to lose appreciation for the moment, regardless of “newness”.
Nor is everyone so easily adept at willing it to be so.
But engaged awareness, to your point, is a helpful consideration to be sure!
What a great tool to reach for!
Photography helped me with this, and I know not everyone is creative, but editing photos personally helped me find some wonder. You can do so much with perspective and change an image into something completely different with just the right modifications… Anyway. The world is shifty and we have all been in it too long and are Hella jaded. You just have to find novel things, even if it is harder for our brains to view that way, we can even trick our brains by doing mundane things in a new way. Like for instance instead of shaving in the shower or bathroom, go outside into nature, bring a mirror and shave there. I remember Michio Kaku saying something like this and the added bonus is it will make your life feel longer too, since it is adding novelty, your brain doesn’t just go into autopilot.
For everyone wondering whether or not they’re depressed, there is a tool doctors use called the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), broadly available online as a PDF. If you score high talk to your doctor about it. Take good care of yourselves fellow lemmings.
Additionally, mindfulness sometimes gets a bad rep but it’s an awesome way to reconnect with your ‘feeling’ side. There are many apps, I found one that really works for me and it’s awesome.
‘emotiinal blunting’
When your older, you understand how shitty the world really is, and shatters any hope you ever had.
I thought the world was so awesome, space is so vast, the world so interconnected, technology, communication across the whole world, we have flying machines, we (as in humanity) went to the moon, we have machines on mars, we might reverse aging…
Then, the realization that we are alone in space, the universe doesn’t care about us, technology is being used for mass surveillance, censorship and propaganda, false information, carbon emissions, recession to authoritarianism, discrimination, etc…
I wish I could be naive and happy as I used to be, but once you grow up, you understand how fucked up thw world is. Its hard to have hope again.
I’m diagnosed with depression, but maybe depression is just the realization of the horrible truth of the world.
I think being depressed is perfectly natural when being on this planet. But since it makes your life worse, it’s important to know how to think about something else so you don’t feel sad all the time (which is natural considering how shitty it all is). Human leaders are at a very primitive stage of mental evolution and we all suffer because of that.
I get excited about computers and tech so I focus a lot on that in my life. You need to find something that feels fun and exciting despite the world being shit. Also I stopped watching news like 15 years ago and I’m ignorant now of all the things that happen every day. Feels better.
I used to think it was foolish to be disconnected from the news and current events, but now I think the opposite is true.
It’s much better for mental health at least. You won’t know about all the stuff that happens every day, but I feel like it’s all useless knowledge anyway.
You will start to feel disgusted by those people on the TV. News anchors, presidents, celebrities, fed chairman’s or whatever it is. They are all inside the matrix 100%.
I think there’s definitely something healthy behind the idea that depression is actually a fairly natural or reasonable state, however hard and painful it can be. Especially for anyone that wants to be mindful of the danger of psychopaths or sociopaths who are probably the types of people that seem oddly immune or unable to understand or empathise with depression.
Otherwise, I’ll just say that a “second childhood” can be a thing (as far as I can tell), where all of the concerns of middle age fade away and we’re forced to wrestle, naively perhaps, with the sheer reality of existing.
My therapist said to me the other day that anxiety is the brain’s survival mechanism and depression is “Safe mode.” It’s so hard in the modern world for most people to find the in between because there is so much to give us anxiety and make us feel like we are in danger and so of course since the body always seeks homeostasis, depression is sure to follow. It’s like an up and down Rollercoaster with no end.
I think a big part of it is that when we are young, all of these are new experiences to us. And as such, they carry a lot more emotion and stimulation.
As an adult, you’ve experienced many things. To some degree, your brain is likely acustomed to it.
Something that helps is breaking out of your routines and experiencing new things. I’ve heard our neural pathways described as the grooves that form on a hill when sledding. When you first slide down the hill, you’re making brand new grooves. Each trip is different and unique. But over time, trails get established and you end up using the same worn trails over and over.
Experiencing new, bespoke things is like breaking out of the trails and making a new one.
At least, that’s my understanding! I’m not a proffessional, just someone who can relate to what you’re describing :)
I have to agree. I grew up in a tropical climate and moved to the northern part of the northern hemisphere several years ago. The first few winters I would look like some kind of child lost in the wonder of the beauty of snow falling because I’d never lived in a place that had snow. Sometimes I still have those moments.
I am not a doctor, but it could be depression. It is really difficult to not feel terrible sometimes given the state of the world right now.
I’ll add one more point.
Not just cause of age, but people disregard feeling when they don’t find it comfortable with. People want to be treated in someway and don’t want you feel in other shape or form.
Which is another reason why we tame/shape our feelings abiding by the social norms.
I used to be over friendly in my 20s. That behaviour isn’t appreciated in professional relationships. I had to change my attitude towards people overtime and stop emphathizing with them, to a certain degree.
It is certainly a matter of environment and peers you had around you, not age.
Definitely agree. To your point on new things, I still feel that sense of awe and wonder when I go on trips to places I’ve never been, hear an awesome song for the first time, or even learn something new. It takes a certain level of motivation to feel those senses as you age (mid 30s here), and determination to seek those things out. I know I am lucky in that I’m at a stage in life where I have the resources to make some of these happen, but a lot of it is also forcing the free time to both seek out experiences and also be able to appreciate them.
I think one of the reasons people like having kids, is because they can see the world through there eyes. Everything you’ve already experienced numerous of times, they get to see for the first time and relay there joy to you. And you get to show them. Ignoring the depressing reality, painting a picture of the world like it once felt to you.
Yep. Each time you perform the same action, say the same words, think the same thoughts the connection of the neural pathways responsible for those things are strengthened. It is why depression and anxiety and other mental issues are so hard to reverse. It is possible though. I urge anyone who thinks they have depression to look up a book called “The Upward Spiral.” It is co-written by a neuroscientist and a psychologist and was really eye opening for me on the inner workings of the brain when it comes to depression and anxiety and has helped me at least start on a path to making myself better.
Well, the older you get the more experiences you have. Not everything is going to feel new when you’ve been through it a few decades.
I’d say it’s normal.
That is why I fell in love with shrooms, TBH. Psilocybin has resurrected a curiosity in me that I haven’t felt in years. I just seemed that at 40 years, there aren’t many situations that I haven’t seen or experienced in daily life. As a side benefit, I have learned how to grow mushrooms.
Edit: haven’t
I just seemed that at +40 years, there aren’t many situations that I have seen or experienced in daily life.
Very true, I feel that. It’s incredibly easy to not even realize that, too.
My only fear is I’ve got another 40 years to go lol
The “midlife crisis” is real. For me, it’s looking for new things to do, cutting out bad habits (drinking) and am trying not to think about how life is actually all downhill from here. I am not going to buy a sports car or anything, but some healthy experimentation with psychedelics does seem to scratch that itch.
I think I rationalized my fear by understanding just how much shit I have seen and I still have another 30 to 40 years left, which is a good thing.
Yeah, I also see it more as a successful survival story than anything else! I turn 40 in a month.
I bet the next 40 years are going to be easier and more rewarding on average, if I take care of myself, use the lessons I’ve learned, and avoid bad habits! I have so many advantages I didn’t have in the first half of my life.
I’m going to go ahead and skip the whole midlife crisis thing, I can’t be bothered with it :D
I was just going to comment exactly that.
I’m sure it also has something to do with that when you get older, you’ve had those experiences many more times than as a child. They just don’t feel that specia anymore.l
Wow, that rings brutal, but true. “Childlike wonder” is truly special.
This is also why days feel faster as you age. More repetition and your brain doesn’t need to form as much new memories.
Want to live longer? Experience more novelty!
Yeah, it is normal, but it also sounds like depression.
Just go eat a bunch of psilocybin and report back OP
LSD connects parts of your brain that you haven’t used or haven’t been connected together since childhood.
Now while this doesn’t always lead to good experiences it cured my severe depression for around 12 months. I woke up feeling generally happy for the first time in a decade.
Luckily these chemicals are gradually being legalized for study and should lead to some amazing therapeutic applications.
Objective unclear, ate penicillin and created a bacterium capable of speech.
On a more serious note…I gotta find some psilocybin.
This is the way.
I’d advise against suggesting that people should take psychedelics honestly. I know some people who have had their depression cured with psychedelics, and others who have come away from trips traumatized and scarred by false realities that their brains made up. It’s a strange thing.
Try LSD. It’s like being a kid again.
Or mushrooms.
Ops not joking. It literally allows your brain to create new pathways instead of being stuck with the same boring bullshit that repeats in daily life.
Just make sure you dose right and teach yourself in a proper way instead of taking what some friend hands you to “tRiP bAlLzzz, mannn”. Treat it like medicine.
Couldn’t agree more, I use psychadelics a few times a year, and nothing brings be to that same feeling OP was describing like LSD or mushrooms. Some of the best conversations and experiences I’ve ever had agave been on psychedelics, I laugh till I cry almost everytime I’ve done them. have had bad trips in my life, but I feel like Set and Setting are hugley important as well as having respect for the drug. Overall highly recommend.
I came here to say that as well. Or, as @vd1n says, mushrooms. It really helps remind you that the world is wondrous, and even after it’s over, it makes it easier to see the joy in everything.
I never did mushrooms and only did LSD like 5 times. But one time I contemplated the multitude of grass types when laying down on a meadow. Another time was on a short mountain trip, landed at a tourist shelter, there was a melody in all the kitchen noises. Also observing the tiny ecosystem at the riverside is something I will never forget. I don’t have this kind of patience or ability to being fascinated with the mundane normally.
Getting to the point in life where you realize how the sausage is made, packaged, marketed, distributed, sold, cooked, consumed, digested, defecated, flushed, mixed with other waste, and either separated into solids and liquids or dumped into the ocean will do that to you.
That’s exactly why we do drugs
'cause ya never know when your gonna go!
I recently read that in a neurotypical human being, the succession of two experiences only has a big impact on brain activity for the first experience, while the second makes a smaller spike. In psychotic patients on the other hand, the impression makes two equally large spikes both times. In the experiment, the experience was hearing a ballpoint pen click. So maybe being dulled to former experience is important for the brain to function properly, just a side effect of our natural brain filter.
That’s sad, but comforting in a way.
The prefrontal lobe is the part of your brain responsible for saying “hush”
i.e. that’s not a novel idea/stimulus anymore
This makes a lot of sense to me. I am trying to link it to survival and evolution, but can’t pin anything down off the top of my head. I’m going to continue mulling it over though.
Man, I don’t know, but this post was beautifully crafted, you sir are a poet.
It’s do with living in the moment vs spending your time thinking about what you did or worrying about what the future might bring, IMHO.
We become way more prone to spend our time doing things like thinking about stuff we did (and how we miss it if it was good or could’ve done it better if it was bad) and worrying about what the future can bring (and not necessarily in grand terms: somethingas simple as “I have to get a haircut” which then goes one to “when will I have the time”, then “but I need that time for X” and so on) as we grow older.
You absolutelly can still have some moments of wonder (for things as simple as how a cobweb looks with droplets of morning mist on it) but you need to be present there in mind also, not just in body, and not to not let some memory or concern rush in to take your mental attention away from the now.
I had a point in my life with a ton of anxiety and ended up learning Mindfulness (which is simply to try and not say anything to yourself in your mind, which is surprisingly hard to do for more than a few seconds) to stop the feeling (if you’re not constantly looking back to something bad or fearing for something bad in the future you don’t feel anxious about those things) and as a side effect I ended up with the habit of being more often present in the moment and that’s how you just enjoy little wonders when you come across them.
Still, it’s nowhere at the level one has as a kid.
Fully recommend the psychedelics BUT it’s not for everyone.
Practice mindfulness through meditation.
Psychedelics do what that does but does so through explosive force, lol.
Mindfulness is so fundamentally critical to feeling alive again. That breeze still exists. The sound of the cicadas buzzing away is still there. The scent of rain still permeates.
Meditation isn’t going “ohmmmmm🧘”. It’s a practice of clearing your mind, and living through your senses. Discerning your existence through means other than thought.
When you were a kid, you didn’t have the capacity to only think like you do now. You were jumping between thought and raw sensory analysis. You were both free and grounded through your senses.
It’s about finding a balance that as a kid you couldn’t obtain, and that as an adult you have forsaken.
Good luck friend. Just know that you can get back to that.
Edit: I’d like to add that you practice until it’s second nature, and you become much more aware as a result. You won’t need to stop to smell those roses - they will grab your attention.
I’ve occasionally referred to psychedelics as ‘microwave Buddhism’
It’s kind of the opposite for me. Like many people said, when you are young, every experience mostly feels new. However, when everything feels new to you, there’s really nothing special about it. For me, I always embraced the familiar. I look back at my memories of family vacations with disappointment, because as everyone else was wanting to go and do fun things, I was complaining about how I would rather be watching TV or playing my gameboy. Now as an adult, I understand how precious our experiences can be. I look out at a mountain and I appreciate the beauty of it. I think about the history that has taken place around it. I think about how other people might have experienced it. I get so much more from it than I ever would have as a child.
Same here. It simply comes from within. Everything now is so special because I’m aware how fleeting everything is.
Thanks for your comment. It resonated a lot with my experience.
