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Gen Xers and Boomers discuss the eye-opening aging warning signs no one warned them about

"That eventually you will end up in that CVS aisle you always skipped because it didn’t pertain to you."

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Gen X and Boomers share unexpected signs of aging.

No one can speak on the truths about aging quite like Boomers (those born 1946 to 1964) or Gen X (those born 1965 to 1980). With years of life under their belt, they possess rare wisdom and insight into what it's like to really get old.

Over on Reddit, user @Knightress04 posed the following question to Boomers and Gen Xers on the hilariously named /AskOldPeople channel: "What’s something about aging that no one warned you about, but you wish they had?"

The responses did not hold back. Gen Xers and Boomers opened up about their first-hand experiences and let their opinions flow. These are the best responses to the warning signs about aging from Gen Xers and Boomers, including the good, the bad, and the ugly:

"The slow loss of everything, your abilities, your health, your friends, relatives, places you loved, etc. Just the eroding away of everything." —@ BreadfruitOk6160

"All the loss you endure." —@southerndude42

"I wish they had warned me that it's OKAY 'not to do anything' when you retire. My husband and I have been retired about two years now, and it's been wonderful. But we're not jetting around the world. We are just relaxing, enjoying being home. And that's okay, it doesn't mean we have a worse life now." —@slenderella148

"The invisibility." —@TimeSurround5715

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"Aches and pains don’t go away in a day. Sometimes it takes a week." —@OscarTravolta

"Start appreciating the smallest things… like a quiet morning, or when a friend texts u a meme outta nowhere. those tiny moments hit diff now." —@quietswoon

"It’s so much harder to gain muscle once you age." —@GroundAndSound

"That eventually you will end up in that CVS aisle you always skipped because it didn’t pertain to you." —@IntentionAromatic523

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"How fast time goes by. I was 21 yesterday. Now I'm 69. Time went by way to quickly." —@Dry-Cause2061

"That I would feel this great. And content. And so much more in love with my SO, decade after decade. That there would be as much joy in walking fast laps as there was in running full court basketball. That for all the travail I've had a wonderful life. That it would become so easy to understand Robinson Jeffers:"

Still the mind smiles at its own rebellions,
Knowing all the while that civilization and the other evils
That make humanity ridiculous, remain
Beautiful in the whole fabric, excesses that balance each other
Like the paired wings of a flying bird."

—@Own-Animator-7526

"All the napping! I've never needed so many naps..." —@Familiar_Collar_78

nap, napping, naps, take a nap, naptime The Blacklist Sleep GIF by NBC Giphy

"Menopause. I knew so little about it beyond hot flashes, but what absolutely NOBODY told me was: after 40+ years of mostly painful, heavy periods, it is a GLORIOUS feeling not to have a period anymore. 🙌 I especially love the freedom of being able to travel without having to calculate whether I’d need to pack extra products and underwear. (Thank God my agony came pretty much like clockwork every 28 days. 🙄)." —@Technical-Bit-4801

"Death, there are fewer & fewer people that know who you really are & where you came from. I've these parts of my life I shared with friends, & they're dead now. It's a strange feeling, when I'm gone it'll be like those moments never happened. The loss of shared experiences, I guess. It's nothing terribly important, or even very impactful, it's just slightly sad." —@Inside_Ad_7162

"How precious time will feel. Every moment matters to me now and I have no patience for squandering it. I consider myself very laid back but if there is anything that will trigger me, it's someone wasting my time. Feels like they're stealing my most precious resource." —@PicoRascar

nose hair, nose hair, hair in nose, waxing hair, nosehairs Waxing Hair Removal GIF Giphy

"As a male. The crazy ear and nose hairs that grow." —@Mikethemechanic00

"Late sixties. ....something about aging no one warned about? sounds like it's gotta be something bad. I wasn't warned about how independent, footloose and fancy free I'd feel once all work and family commitments and obligations were fulfilled. And I can be cantankerous whenever I wanna be. Most folks get warned about long term health consequences but it is difficult to overcome the insidious long-term ill-health consequences of commercial, corporate, processed, fast food pressures and convenience. way too much is spent on consequences of poor health and not enough on prevention and education --- imho." —@Buzzhoops

"The sensitivity. I have always been a very sensitive person who feels things deeply. But I'm also GenX so calloused, but lord a mercy if middle-age hasn't turned me into a crybaby. I swear I never used to cry so much." —@earthgarden

cry, sensitive, feelings, emotional, tears Sad Cry GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants Giphy

"That regularly putting money into savings or a retirement account is as important as brushing your teeth every day." —@InternalAcrobatic216

"When you hear a song or band from your youth that you absolutely hated because they were so cheesy and god-awful bad, but now when you hear it.. it brings back smiles and memories…. that’s the cleansing power of Nostalgia!" —@Hillman314

This article originally appeared in June.

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South Koreans will soon be the same age as the rest of the world

Their new president is looking to change a long-standing tradition.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Koreans may soon be changing the tradition of how they declare their age.

Can you remember how old you are? As we get older, remembering our actual age can get harder, especially when it begins to take longer and longer to scroll and find your birth year. Now imagine having to keep track of two different ages. For many South Koreans, this is the reality. That's right, based on a tradition that dates back so far no one really knows when it started, most South Koreans are two different ages. But their new president is looking to change the tradition, to make life easier for everyone.


Currently, South Koreans have their "Korean age" and their international age. The "Korean age" is the thing that President Yoon Suk-yeol is looking to change. The way it works is that a person is considered a year old at birth, adding a year every January 1. So if you have a baby born on December 30, on January 1, they're 2 years old, even though they've only been alive two days. The Korean age is mostly used in social situations, while the international age (where you turn 1 on your first birthday) is used for legal purposes.

“If I try to fill out a form at a government office or a foreign embassy, I’m not sure what to put for my age,” Lee Jae-hye, a video producer in Seoul, told The New York Times.

It's worth mentioning there's a third, less common way of defining age: "year age," which is kind of a hybrid of the two other practices. A newborn is considered 0 at birth, but they add the first year on January 1. So again, a December 30 baby would be 2 days old and also 1 year old. This is only used for military service and elementary education. No wonder it's confusing for the citizens.

Lee Yong-ho, chief of the president-elect's transition committee, acknowledged the stress these different ages puts on citizens.

“Due to the different calculations of legal and social age, we have experienced unnecessary social and economic costs from persistent confusion and disputes over calculating age when receiving social, welfare and other administrative services or signing or interpreting various contracts,” he said in a press briefing.

For many South Koreans, keeping track of up to three ages is just too much of a pain. Having to remember the right birth certificate because you use one for the doctor's office but another one for the DMV sounds like a nightmare. While the average person understands what paperwork they need for where, the need alone is a major source of frustration. That's why so many adults are in favor of the president's decision to make the change by the end of the year.

A survey taken this past January shows that 40% of adults believe making the change will "ease conflicts within the country’s social hierarchy." As a hierarchical society, the focus on age and having multiple ages can cause confusion and unnecessary conflict. If you search "Korean age system," you'll discover multiple calculators in case you forget or don't know. Some historians and scholars worry that the change will be a detriment to society, but there's a better chance that younger generations will embrace the universal change to international age.

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A cringey essay on 'easy breezy millennials' generated an avalanche of hilarious responses

Standsome Worklifestyle on Unsplash, @lenikacruz/Twitter, @appleciderwitch/Twitter, @eplerjc/Twitter

The battle between millennials and older generations isn't exactly a generational war—it's more a case of mistaken generational identity. A decade ago, whining about millennials being young adults unprepared to make their way in the world at least made sense mathematically. But when people bag on millennials now they end up looking rather foolish.

A marketing researcher with a doctorate in social psychology wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune titled "Post-pandemic, some millennials finally decide to start #adulting." And when the Tribune shared it to Twitter, their since-deleted tweet read, "Writer Jennifer Rosner predicts COVID-10 lockdowns will force easy-breezy millennials to grow up."

Hoo boy.

Interestingly, the writer of the op-ed is a millennial herself, but she repeats generalizations about her entire generation that seem like they mainly apply to her own social circle. Read it yourself to decide, but regardless, the tweet of the op-ed itself set off a firestorm of responses from millennials who are tired of being painted as irresponsible young people who don't know how to "adult" instead of what they actually are.

First of all, the oldest millennials are turning 40 this year The youngest are 25—either well out of college or well into grad school. And yet, they've been thought of as the youngest adults for the past 10-15 years, even as they've aged into full-on adulthood.

The struggle of millennials is not that they don't know how to be adults. It's that the financial reality of the world in which they came of age made it much harder to get established than previous generations, with two recessions, stagnant wages, rising costs of living, and crippling debt from skyrocketing tuition costs.


Nonetheless, most millennials are 30-somethings who are in the midst of careers, paying mortgages, raising kids, and other extremely adult things. And they're doing it with less security and stability on a basic level than previous generations experienced. They are resilient because they have to be. They are resourceful because they have no choice.

What they, as a generation, are not? Easy breezy.

A good chunk of the parents who have had to figure out childcare for their young kids during a pandemic or learn on the fly how to help their children with virtual school while also managing their own careers from home? Millennials.

Seriously, the oldest millennials were early in their career years when the 2008 recession hit, and the youngest millennials are at that stage now, during this pandemic recession. Those lucky middle-millennials may have had an easier time finding a job—maybe—but they're still dealing with wages that haven't kept up with costs of living increases while trying to getting their families started.

Oh yeah, and they're inheriting a crescendoing global climate crisis to boot. Easy breezy!

The responses were swift and fierce.

And some of them were simply, wryly hilarious.







Every generation has its share of struggles and every generation thinks the generation before and after it is somehow flawed, but it's those generalizations themselves that are the biggest problem. Sure, there are generational differences born of changes in the world, social pendulum swings, and reactions to our own upbringings, but to blame a generation for circumstances they can't control is pretty crappy and to lump them all together as lazy or entitled or "easy breezy" is as inaccurate as it is rude.

I'm not a millennial—solidly Gen X here—but the millennials I know are great people. Leave them alone unless you've got a solution to the challenges they're facing beyond "stop buying avocado toast" and "save up money from your underpaid job for a house you can't afford." And for the love of all that is good and holy, stop talking about them like they're doe-eyed college students. Time to give them the full respect we give all "real" adults. They've definitely earned it.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg shared some serious hope for the future — both hers and ours.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wants to stay "at least" another five years.

Ginsburg, 85, was attending a play on Sunday, July 29, about her former SCOTUS colleague Antonin Scalia when she was asked how much longer she expects to stay on the nation’s highest court.

She pointed to another former justice as a good barometer.

"I'm now 85," Ginsburg said. "My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years."

Photo by Allison Shelley/Getty Images.

In the last several years, Ginsburg has become a favorite justice amongst progressives, especially women.

It's fairly unusual for a sitting Supreme Court Justice to have developed such a cult following. But the RBG fandom is definitely at a fevered pitch. A new documentary, "RBG," explores how she’s become a pop-culture phenomenon despite being at an age when many people are well into their retirement.

Ginsburg is a beloved and outspoken member of the court, and her recent statement sent a wave of relief across social media and reassured her fans — and critics — that she isn’t planning to leave anytime soon.

She also offered some guiding words about the future.

When asked what keeps her "hopeful" about what's to come, Ginsburg didn’t mince words. Things are always in flux, particularly in politics:

What might seem overwhelming today could be old news tomorrow.

"My dear spouse would say that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle — it is the pendulum," Ginsburg said. "And when it goes very far in one direction, you can count on its swinging back."

In the meantime, it’s good to know she’s sticking around to keep the pendulum a little more in check and to inspire others, assuring them that they can and do make a difference in the world.

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