Dying is Hard, But Aging is a Bigger Bitch

You no longer have a future

Leonardo Del Toro
5 min readSep 21, 2024

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There is nothing after you die. You don’t know you’re dead and don’t know what is not to know or to know. There is no history, no memory of anything. Nothing has ever existed, nor you or the universe or anything at all. If life is all-knowing, death is all unknowing. And I would say that’s a pretty easy task.

There is nothing to do or to worry about; there is no future, past, or present. And that is a difficult thing to get our heads around. But before you die, you get old, and that, my friends, is a bigger bitch.

What is so difficult about getting old is that you begin to feel all markers of death while you are still alive. Your body starts to disintegrate, all your friends and family begin to die, and the time when you were most alive and active begins to disappear. In its place, there is a new time, and as you age, it becomes more and more challenging to participate and understand this new time.

Your heroes are gone; your favorite rock stars are gone. Your jokes and movie lines are no longer funny. You are no longer allowed in the new time. Even if you fake it and join the young world, it will never be an authentic experience because it is not your time.

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