When the process and new chapters of life catch you off guard?

[RedWings19]

is normal to feel depressed about this? Can anyone relate?

Childhood seems to make you feel like you’ll be young and playful forever protected by your parents. No other time like this in your life.

high-school comes and life is GREAT, it is just having fun and living the life. Experiencing new freedoms all while having very little responsibility. You feel like you’ll be young forever along with all your friends as well. In my case house parties, bar hopping, video games with friends for hours a night, playing sports outside with friends for hours, meeting up and smoking up and enjoying the nice summer weather with your buds while thinking there’s so much to look forward to in life

Fast forward and you’re now in your late twenties. Yourself and friends barley have time for anything anymore. Hobbies that you loved doing together slowly fade. You and your friends are all in serious relationships, each couple one by one getting engaged with “having kids” quickly approaching in the next year or two.

I find it all hard to accept for some reason and unsure why. I feel like although I always wanted a family.. at almost 30 I still feel young as if I’m in college still. I miss partying with friends and being careless and happy and not worrying about anything other than having a great time.

I miss those days and I know they’re over.. which seem to have caught me off guard.. as if I didn’t know they were ending. myself and friends all stressed with responsibilities like work, mortgage, bills and … knowing myself as well as all my friends will be having their first child within the next few years.. makes me realize things are going to change even more from the days that I look back on so fondly.

Seeing the youthfulness of my friends sort of fade away just hurts. We were just kids yesterday it feels like. Is there just something wrong with me to feel like this?

[normalice]

It is sad but it is life. As much as science tries to push the boundaries of civilization to give it more dominion over the cold realities of a random and indeterminate universe, we are barely making a dent. Especially with half the world seemingly preferring to stop doing the work of scientific advancement that would further that dent, instead preferring to just have everyone subscribe to the idea that it is doesn't need to be done. Which isn't even wrong, except the reasons for it usually are false (i. e. religion). "The universe does not need life" is the real reason. Life is an anomaly that will ultimately revert to the meaningless 2 degrees Kelvin matter as everything else.

But, if you die believing death is not the end, you still die happier than if you died not believing that. Of course, both your happiness and despair dies with you all the same, so the benefit is only to the individual in the moment, only they get to know about that benefit, and then they stop knowing forever. But no benefit, not even that fleeting instantaneous one, comes without cost, and the cost of impeding civilization's efforts towards a future where we may not need to worry so much about our mortality is that that success, if it is even achievable, only gets further delayed. It is selfish to want to deny future generations the fruits of your sacrafice so they can use it to obtain something you can not have, but what's wrong with selfishness, really? If you die selfish or die benevolent, it is the same death. I would, however, argue that it is spiteful to sabotage the efforts of science specifically because they can't benefit you, and spite is a little different than selfishness because instead of denying others your sacrafice, you are taking from other people their sacrafice, just to make yourself feel better about missing out when you are going to die whether you feel better or not. Just as everyone you take from will, too, but you'd have exceeded the boundaries of your own choices which is something that outlasts you.

[RedWings19]

I see you’re conclusion is basically nothing matters because we all die the same inevitable death. I don’t believe in life after death although I wish I did.

Despite not believing in life after death, that final moment before I pass.. in fact even the years, days months or whatever leading up to my death.. I want to feel happy with myself in those final moments of awareness.

Truth is that I have so many regrets up to this point in my life that I don’t even think I could get this wish of mine. Relationships with family I wish I worked harder for.. relationships that I wish I appreciated more in the moment.

Oh well.. life is sad. Maybe the idea of passing away and losing all awareness is a good thing after all.. although still very frightening at the same time

[normalice]

Oh. I wasn't done but had to do something so I just sent it. I was going to go on to point out how "exceeding the boundaries of your own choices" is actually kind of mandatory when raising children. You are expected to influence them in a way that outlasts you. But you will be unable to appreciate the influence you do have unless you can accept that you will have no control over how it propagates. Like, you might try to teach your child to, for example, remember the Alamo and they might do that - but they might, instead, resent it and learn to devalue history altogether. Both are the result of the teaching so you still had an influence you were just not capable of controlling how that influence manifests. The sooner you can accept this the better you will get a handle on the things you can control.

In any case, while we can do nothing about our own regrets, the best we can hope for is to teach future generations not to make our mistakes. But the puzzle behind all of this is many of our mistakes were made as a direct result of our reactions to our parents trying to teach us not to make their mistakes.

[Tyrael]

I think that's all very natural and most people feel the same way. I miss those years too. However I'm not on the road to marriage and kids, I'm on the road to exploring the world on my own. You don't need to walk a certain path just because it's expected. You can get new hobbies and explore new things.