A lot of people in the comments are lamenting their physical pains. I feel ya, y’all.

TL;DR: yoga, Pilates, McKenzie Method physical therapy.

Some background first, then a low- to zero-price solutions. My partner and I are both 52 years old. She had Stage-IVb cancer two years ago, the treatment for which left her with ongoing issues. I abused the hell out of my body starting in my early teens:

• dirt biking (crashes)
• mountain biking (crashes)
• road bicycling (been hit by cars seven times, MCL tears, cervical disc herniation)
• software engineering (sedentary, ergonomically shit offices, postural issues, cervical radiculopathy, sciatica, RSIs)
• open ocean sailor (yeah, all of it is just brutal)

Despite all of that, we are both regularly clocking PBs. She’s a competitive rower, triathlete, and mountain biker, and I’m a long distance cyclist. AND we are 90 to 99% pain-free, depending if we did our maintenance work.

Doing yoga, Pilates, and McKenzie Method physical therapy (MMPT) keeps you going at full tilt. You can start for free with yoga and Pilates, just find a zero-equipment YT channel that appeals to you. We’re partial to “Yoga with Adrienne” and “Move with Nicole.” Start slow and easy.

For the MMPT, “Bob and Brad” on YT are MMPTs. Robin McKenzie’s books are worth owning, or just check them out from the library. Memorize the exercises, and don’t stop doing them just because the pain dropped below threshold(!!!). I…uh… might have direct experience there. :D

Use or lose it, take care of the hardware and software, and all that. With a little care and maintenance, you can rock the hell out of your body for a very long time. I didn’t believe it until the first time I met a 70 year old downhill mountain biking champion. His age class starts at 55, so he was beating professional racers 15 years younger than he. He was the one who taught me about yoga, Pilates, and MMPT being the key.

If any of this blather helps even one of you just a little, it was worth the insomnia, typing-on-phone hell. :D

Nah, mirrors don’t reflect your soul.

By soul I don’t mean some mystic woowoo stuff. I mean the core of your self, and all the messy connections it has to memory.

That’s the shit that makes you feel old, not hair or skin

Not like your muscles are going to remind you or anything lol

Look at your hands

WRINKLED

You still old, fuck

This post is more sad than false, but really really wrong.

Remove eyes, remove skin, remove ears. Then you’ll probably not perceive time other than through pain which will distract you from the ageing.

Wait, I thought dating jail bait was the best way to keep feeling young?

Looking young is very different from feeling young.
I could never look at myself in the mirror ever again and it wouldn’t make my knees feel any better.

I can still see my hands. They look older than I feel.

Removing mirrors makes back pain disappear? Cool!

OP, you sound young.

K E R A T O S E S. Actinic and Seborrheic. One might kill you, both feel like barnacles growing on your body. My body’s little present to welcome me to middle age. I now have to go to the dermatologist every 6 months, just like the dentist, to have them removed or I start to feel like an old sail boat that might die of skin cancer.

I don’t seem to look into mirrors unintentionally. I don’t like seeing myself unless it’s deliberate, like to check my skin or shave. I pass by a huge bathroom mirror on the way to go to the bathroom without registering it. I like that about myself.

Tried to have ice cream in a place where the bar-style stools were in front of a mirrored wall and it was really difficult to relax. That part I don’t like.

Acne come Backne

Viola! I’m young again!

Don’t make sitting in the house your identity, I think every older person I know who is still doing all the things they did at 40 has hobbies and a lifestyle that gets them about. There’s a group of 70-year-olds on my commute riding mountain bikes daily up the biggest hill in the area, and they’re faster than me.