Comments on: Do people really feel like they’ve wasted their youth?

By: FelliniBlank

FelliniBlank — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:57:18 +0000

I don’t feel as if I wasted my youth, mainly because I know every step I’ve taken in one direction or another along the way helped land me in the very contented place I am now. I do have those idle daydream “if I woke up at 15 knowing what I know now, what would I do differently?” moments, though. And there’s plenty I would do differently — so I just do it differently now.

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:17:21 +0000

I had a fun and productive youth. It’s my adult life I’m wasting.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:22:21 +0000

I don’t think I wasted my youth, though of course there are things I wish I had done, not done (remember, hay burns really easy, especially when it hasn’t rained for a while) or done differently. The sad truth about youth is that is wasted on the young, meaning most of us don’t realize how good things are when we’re that age, we’re so focused on what we don’t have or can’t do, etc, etc. But that’s kinda the point of youth, there’s so much we’re unaware of and don’t know it’s almost comically funny.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:12:27 +0000

At 27, I’m still, technically, in my “youth” so I suppose I can remedy this, but I regret having been a boringly sensible youngster. I had opportunities to do all kinds of stupid, irresponsible activities, sex, drugs, adventure, and I decided I’d end up regretting it and didn’t do it. I regret having so few regrets.

By: chrismear

chrismear — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:38:18 +0000

I guess I think of it more in terms of having a breadth of experience to give yourself a kind of mental calibration. Not just in terms of sex, but also terms of other private or internal experiences. But let’s pick on sex because it’s so easy to.

If you’ve had a fair amount of experience with different people, covering the range from great sex to crap sex, you have a scale on which to judge what you’re currently getting. Whereas, if you’ve only ever been with one person, and you have vague feelings of dissatisfaction with your current partner, it’s quite easy to start thinking “well, this seems okay, but I’ve never experienced anything else, maybe this is actually not as great as I thought it was”.

It sounds kinda silly because there’s movies and books, and experienced friends to talk to, so surely we should all know what great sex should be like? Well, no, not really. It’s a hugely personal experience that few people really talk about, and depictions of it can be exaggerated or miss the point entirely. So when it comes down to making leave-or-stay kinds of decisions, you can only really go on your past personal experience.

Sex, love, friendships — these are the areas in which personal satisfaction and current ’success’ can only be judged internally. It’s not like, say, financial success, where you have a fairly transparent easy way of comparing your achievements with your peers, and deciding whether you’re happy with what you’re getting.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:25:06 +0000

I know you’re joking, Chris Mear, but that plays into my point. Let’s say you’re 50, you never got a chance to sleep around when you were in your 20s. What upsets you the most, that you didn’t get to do it back then or that you’re not doing it right now? Are there really people who feel like, “Well, I know I’m married now and can’t sleep around, but I got to do it when I was 22! Man, that was fun! I’ll just sit here and think about that!”?

That’s what I can’t connect with.

I have some fun memories of the past, and they’re cool to think about now and then, but they don’t excite me the way present things do. Particularly if they happened 20 years ago. I don’t much care what the 20-year-old me did. That might as well have been another person.

By: Chris Mear

Chris Mear — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:24:54 +0000

I think it’s mainly to do with the opportunity to sleep with lots of hot 20-somethings.