For those of you over the age of 50, what is your “Widsom” of age? What Wisdom do you have in your trade that a young person may be if it from? Something worth more than gold itself?

We spend much of our lives waiting for something, or sleeping. We don't actually LIVE most of it. You wait in lines, yeah, but there's also the driving, or public transportation. It's just a necessary thing to get to somewhere, it's not really living. There's the time you spend at work, often on autopilot, just waiting until you can go do something YOU want to do. There are those times you're almost out of money, so now you're waiting until your next paycheck so you can go out and have fun and buy things. There are times when you are waiting for days off, vacation, a holiday. If you're still going to school, you're plugging away, but really looking forward to semester breaks.

For much of our lives, in our mind, we're just looking forward to another day, another time, and not thinking about how our lives are slipping by. How much of your life do you figure you are actually doing something you WANT to do?

Also, when you're young, time passes much more slowly. Teens can see this with their summer vacations. When you're in grade school, summer vacation seems to last forever. In high school, it goes by much more quickly. Even so, you still think you have all the time in the world. When you're older, the days, months, and eventually even the years fly by.

Possibly due to that, old people don't feel like they're old. It was not that long ago they had their whole lives were stretched out before them. They are surprised daily by the old person in the mirror.

/r/AskReddit Thread