I love people who are older than me

this wouldn't leave my head, so I junked it down

I love elderly people. 

Now, please do not misunderstand me; it’s not a romantic love, not even in the slightest. It might be more of a huge curiosity, of an insatiable wonder about how other people experience the world. Perhaps “sonder” is a good word to describe whatever im experiencing when I talk to a stranger. 

To be very honest, I have this wonder with almost every person I know and have met. It’s not exclusive to elder persons but it’s much more present when I talk to older people. It just mesmerises me. Their lives; how they grew up and in what state the world was before. I only know the present: how political situations recently develop, new technological and scientific discoveries and all the other things that are going on in the world, how depressing or motivating they may be. And then I wonder: how was it in the 70s? The 80s? the 90s? Is this usually so cinematically and nostalgic depicted past a realistic representation? I desperately want to know, I want to hear it. I want to experience as closely as possible how life was before my time. (This wonder even goes far back to the ancient Egypt, romans, greeks, medieval times and every other period.)

I think this is where my love for listening to people initially comes from, or from my mother who introduced me to reading at the age of 6 and through that planted curiosity in my mind before I even knew what it is. That I rather prefer to sit and listen instead of actively engaging endlessly in conversations which are solely storytelling where I have to talk myself. 

I’m not sure when realised this about me. I like to think it was a slow realisation, the kind that needs multiple moments piling up to form in your consciousness. 

Mostly, it is so interesting to hear how people have lived. Because they have. it interests me what they regret not doing, what they don’t regret doing at all, things from long ago they still think about, their habits, their world views, they way they speak. Some old people have such an interesting way of speaking, they don’t use slang or they use completely different slang. sometimes it makes me realise how stupidly adorable humans are. we all just get to live on this giant rock by chance and then get formed through experience and upbringing and the rest somehow builds on that. 

Eventually I assume my curiosity is the reason I keep wanting to know more and more about ways of living, physically and emotionally. and I love knowing and wanting to know, even if i’m aware that I never will know everything there is to know. my brain doesn’t even have the capacity for that, and that I have to accept. but I dont think i’ll ever stop listening to older people. of course I will form my own opinions and think critically about what im told but it won’t stop me from listening to people older than me talking about their lives.

this one is rather short but I just wanted to write down what has been going on in my head; and now that i barely have anything to do, since its almost time for summer holidays, I feel weirdly purposeless and unoccupied.

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sonder:

Sonder describes the profound realization that every random stranger is living a life as vivid, complex, and central to them as yours is to you. It is the humbling understanding that you are merely a background character in thousands of other people’s intersecting stories.