Nietzsche: 9 Dark Lessons On Growing Old That Will Change How You Age

Your real age isn't the one on the document. It's how long it's been since the last time you changed your mind about something large. Nine dark lessons from Friedrich Nietzsche on growing old: why repetition frightens you more than the wrinkle, the youth you sell in instalments that all look sensible, the inventory that opens a courtroom at three in the morning, the maturity that is only a lowered standard with a beautiful name, the resentment that is the one thing improving with age, the three metamorphoses and the order everyone gets wrong, the decline that begins in what you stopped refusing, the nostalgia that speaks about the present, and the final question, which isn't how old you are. He never grew old. In eighteen eighty-eight he finished four books in a single year and wrote that he had never felt so well. Three weeks later he collapsed in a Turin street with his arms around a horse's neck, and spent the following eleven years in a chair, looking out of a window, not recognizing his own name on the covers of the books that were finally selling. He died at fifty-five, having had forty-four years of life. Which of the nine hit you? Not the prettiest one. The one that made you want to disagree. TAGS nietzsche,philosophy,growing old,aging,time,maturity,resentment,eternal recurrence,three metamorphoses,last man,midlife crisis,dark philosophy,dark,self knowledge