What Is something you appreciate more as you get older ?

How fleeting childhood is.

I spent most of my life appreciating people, things, and moments once they had passed. (“That was a great time!”).

As I get older, I have been able to whittle away at that delay between experience and appreciation, and can honestly say that there are times where I am overwhelmed with appreciation of whatever is happening as it is happening. In this way, I think I appreciate everything more as I get older, or at least it feels that way.

Also, when I was younger, there were many things that I understood intellectually that I just didn’t truly get, like time (how short life is).

Being regular.

My good health

Ibuprofen.

Comfy clothing. It’s nice to be of an age where I don’t give a shit whether these flannel-lined jeans or this hat make me look ridiculous. And yes, fuzzy slippers.

A good night’s sleep.

The wonder of nature, the feel of weather of any sort on my face. I have always appreciated that, but now it makes me smile just experiencing it.

My wife!

My parents.

My mom and my husband.

Money.

My functioning body.

Peace and quiet, good sleep and nature.

The coming end.

My stunning erection.

@ucme lmfao

I appreciate my heart beating in normal sinus rhythm (NSR) more than ever. It’s been in NSR for the last 21 months (99.99% of the time).

I spent the last 14 years suffering with various heart arrhythmias with 2 risky surgeries; many ED visits & hospital stays and absolutely brutal and powerful cardiac drugs all to try to get my heart to beat normally. Financial cost to health insurance companies >$500K. Cost to my life = a decade of suffering.

As I have gotten more ”snow on the mountain top”, I have come to appreciate God more, I also value and appreciate money, sleep, time, real friends, and average women more. I certainly appreciate health, warm socks, gloves, rain resistant clothes, my bike and the ability to ride it. I am sure if I thought about it, there are more things I appreciate as I get older but they escape me right now.

My family.

Childhood.

Sudden cardiac arrest.

My parents, a good night’s sleep (rare) and any day without back pain.

You mean besides the urinary tract of a twenty year-old and things like that? I appreciate polite behaviour more than I did when I was younger. I appreciate most things that appear less frequently today. The tell-tale. sustained, clear ringing of a silver coin as it is dropped on a marble counter. Full service gas stations where they always asked to check your water and oil, and alerted you when a tire was low.

Neo-Roman and Greek public buildings that would last a century or more—libraries, museums and courthouses with tall columns and ivy and real marble interiors, tall ceilings, windows set in ornate, arched mahogany, cherrywood, or black walnut moulding that reached from the floor to the sky; copulas and bell towers; maybe even a larger-than-life bronze statue of an old general or some other long forgotten hero on horseback out front. Buildings built with public money that didn’t look like strip stores that need replacing every thirty years. Builders on a human scale, yet commanded a certain subliminal awe, respect and behaviour for the institutions which they housed.

Parks with labyrinthine walkways lined with tall night-blooming jasmine, or just a hedge and dimly lit by ornate lamppost, human friendly environments like those that have disappeared and replaced by open landscapes without intimacy, and blindingly lit at night by halogen lamps in the name of public safety. Towns with actual centers to them, instead of unfocussed urban sprawl. Mass transit on a human scale, streetcars every fifteen minutes, trains linking towns. Owning a car was desirable, but still only an option.

How about stuff that isn’t around anymore, like a full-bodied root beer with a dense, tan head and an aftertaste and aroma like bubble gum you could smell from the kitchen into the living room. And real bubblegum, not this thin, sugary stuff they sell today. I have to say the coffee is much improved (even if it’s way, way more expensive). I miss and appreciate the time when you could drop a monofilament line off the pier in my hometown and bring up a twelve-pound Redfish or a six-pound Sheepshead and nobody would notice because it happened all day long. Ten acres of ridge-top, redwood-land-and-rolling-meadow in Sonoma County, California with a view of the Pacific two miles to the west and San Francisco fifty miles to the south for $10,000. A Florida beach where you could run your dog and build a fire after sundown unmolested by cops or drug slingers. There’s so many things, so much stuff that is gone. Don’t get me started. And get the hell off my lawn!

Peace and quiet. and rhubarb pie with warm custard

The joy of living another day. Having a chance to do your life differently or over again.

The chance to appreciate nature one more time: the daffodils, the forsythia (I think how my mom loved it whenever I see one blooming).

The simple pleasures of having a cup of tea or breakfast with someone, laughing with a friend, enjoying a book.

@Espiritus_Corvus I thought you said “a 12 pound RADISH”. lol
Man, that would be some green thumb.

@kritiper Haha…that’s what I’m hoping for, none of this protracted, dying crap for me. I really wish the ranch vet could do human euthanasia too.
I’ll make sure I’m not locked in my stall so nobody will need to bring in a tractor to chain up my legs and drag my carcass out for the backhoe. lol

I’ve come to appreciate, to my surprise, that oftentimes “less is more”. I’ve come to appreciate quality over quantity. I’ve learned that it’s far better and more satisfying to focus on the fewer things that I truly enjoy and to ignore all the other noise and not to spread myself too thin.
And, of course, I appreciate good health. Without good health, nothing else matters.

Waking up.

Older people.

Health.

Nature.

The Arts.

Altruistic acts.

Music.

Free time, real people and simple pleasures.

I seem to have regained my childhood pleasure of watching the majesty of the sky. When I was a boy I would make a hollow in the tall weeds of a field and lay there, watching the clouds, the sun and/or the daytime moon.
As an adult people frequently roll their eyes at my atmospheric observations. Fortunately, that doesn’t diminish my pleasure, as I’ve already experienced it – it’s the sharing that’s lost.

Silence.

“Gracefully surrender the things of youth: birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan. ” Christopher Guest

Time. Time has a way of revealing hidden beauty, like flowers in the spring, or a stranger who does something out of kindness with no strings, and it also reveals the ugly, like a hell hole that opens up under your home or the people who speak of loyalty but are the first to stab your back.

As I get older, I find myself appreciating people older than me for the knowledge and experience they have. It’s something “most” people just “don’t get” when they’re younger. I think that realization comes with age.

Being healthy

I appreciate my family more and the people around me. I used to be a loner and was by myself most of the time but then I realized i shouldn’t do that because it shows that I don’t care about anyone. So now I try to balance it out and spend more time with them while I can have alone time too.