What do you miss most from when you were young?

Swimming in the ocean 9 months out of the year. A Southern California boy.

Energy,and no pain.

Time

The lack of tech was nice.

Being able to climb trees.

I miss the innocence of youth!!! Not having to worry about house & car payments…nor having to be concerned over what the politicians were doing. Running & jumping again would be nice. So would doing cartwheels

Most of all, I’d LOVE to have my family back!!!

Playing outside until the street lights came on with all the kids in the neighborhood.

The seemingly endless amounts of free time. Sure, school was until 2PM, but I finished homework quickly and had, what felt like hours and hours until my folks got home around 6PM. Weekends more so and Summers were endless.

Time to think and explore and imagine and just be.

I feel like I’ve tried to recapture that feeling for over thirty years.

Physical strength. I miss being very strong. At age 71, I’m among the strongest of my age class. But year by year my strength continues to fade even though I exercised vigorously each day. I accept it. It’s a natural process of aging. But I continue to do all I can to slow the physical decline.

^^^^ You all have such fantastic answers. I feel a little guilty now still being young. I wish I could give you all that you want.

^^ All I can tell you is to ENJOY your youth while you still have it. In the wink of an eye, you’ll be reminiscing about the “good old days” & wondering what the hell happened!!!

In pre-1995 little Caesars pizza was actually good.
My grandpa took his recipe for beef stew with him to the grave.

Honestly, not much.

I do have some nostalgic feeling for things that I did/had in the past, like the games I played or the cartoons I watched or those lazy days of doing nothing. But to be frank, my childhood was actually worse than my adulthood. I had no real friend. I had self-esteem issues. I couldn’t do things that I am able to do now. And I was much more susceptible to manipulation and delusion. I’m happy with my current self.

Being able to do things physically. For example: I can no longer get on the floor to fix things, assemble something or look for something because it hurts my knees too much. But age has its pluses too. The other day a couple of friends and I – ages 56–68 – were talking about things we used to do. Someone brought up skipping. We could all visualize it, we hadn’t forgotten how, we simply couldn’t make our bodies do what they needed to skip. We sure tried though!! But man, that’s the hardest we all had laughed in a long time! And that was fun!

But the first thing that came to mind with this question was “innocence”.

I miss spending a lot of time at my grandparents’ house. It was an old Victorian on the banks of the Hudson River. The property went down to the Hudson, beyond the railroad tracks. My grandparents owned the house since the 1940’s and it was built in the 1880s so the woodwork was pristine, it had stained glass windwos, it had a lot of doorways and porches and cool nooks to hide. There were all kinds of things in the house since it was the home for generations in my family.

I miss spending time with my grandmother. She used to do baking, and teach me crafts, and she’d be cooking all the time. I wish I knew how to make her beef vegetable soup and her beef stew, and her apple cake. She used to read to me in bed. She really was like a second mother to me. She was also like a grandmother to a family that lived a few houses up the street from her, and I’m still friends with them to this day, and they have veyr fond memories of my grandmother. She died when I was 14.

Greater youth, and health. Friends and relatives.

Expectations of privacy. Very little security theater. Not having cameras and phones and “devices” everywhere.

Less extinctions, wild habitat destruction, and climate change worries.

The pre-Reagan Republican Party. Nonexistence of Fox News and OAN.

Feeling like there was a relatively higher chance a new movie might be good, and not dumb.

Much more affordable housing and medical costs in the USA.

Much lower expected production values for computer games (so a much lower bar to successful publishing, and players willing to use their imaginations).

Sledging under streetlights outside our home.
The first glimpse of the sparkling sea when going swimming.
Watching episodes of Wells Fargo with my father.
Building dens in the woods.

The trust that permeated society. Not panicking if you didn’t lock the door. Knowing your neighbors. Watching out for one another.

Health.

My grandmother and aunt.

New York State (sometimes I go back for an injection).

Having more hair on my head.

Eating anything and still being thin.

@Mimishu1995: “I’m happy with my current self.”

I’m so glad to hear you say that.

@RayaHope: Don’t feel guilty. It’s your world now. Just try to be the best ‘you’ you can be.

^^ You guys bring tears to my eyes…I don’t know what to say..

Having my nappies (Americanese:diapers) changed.

Wandering off in the boondocks with my buds. Just hiking and roaming with no particular destination in mind.

The freedom to roam wherever as a child as in that time it was cusomary to throw the kids outdtoors early in the morning and not see them until late at night.
Thus home to me IS enjoying nature outdoors, hiking,photographing,sketching,picking up flowers to press and s on.
Out parents NEVER looked for us for breakfast, lunch nor suppers…we pretty well learned to exist on very little as we were given consume soup until we were babysitting and earning a wage to purchase a sandwhich.