Books on the passing of time / dealing with aging and nostalgia?

[Anonymous No.19382926]

Realizing now that I can no longer say I "graduated last year". I feel like time keeps passing and friends keep moving away.

Any relevant books that deal with these feelings?

Picrel

[Anonymous No.19382938]

>>19382926
In Search of Lost Time
The Sound and the Fury
Rings of Saturn
The Neapolitan Novels
My Struggle
To the Lighthouse

[Anonymous No.19384000]

>>19382926
Tartar Steppe

[Anonymous No.19384025]

>>19382926
You're fucking 19 years old, you don't know what the passage of time is yet.

[Anonymous No.19384046]

>>19382926
Brideshead Revisited

[Anonymous No.19384053]

>>19384025
funnily enough, at age 20, the 1/5 of a century, that's when starts setting in.

[Anonymous No.19384071]

>>19384053
It didn’t really, really hit until 24, at which point I actually sobbed on my birthday.
After that you’re sort of numb aside from little pangs from getting nostalgic about something then realizing it came out 20+ years ago, or realizing someone in media that seemed old to you at the time was then how old you are now or younger.

[Anonymous No.19384094]

>>19384053
>>19384071
I thought 25 was the worst until I hit 28, and then 30. After 30 you're so fucked it doesn't matter anymore, you just think about your life and this terrible dread fills your lungs. This is usually where you hit the bottle, xanax or whatever you have found to help yourself

[Anonymous No.19384109]

>>19382926
Not until the end but the end hits like a ton of bricks

[Anonymous No.19384148]

>>19384109
how different is this from the film adaptation by visconti?

[Anonymous No.19384153]

>>19384094
Yeah I’m not looking forward to 30.
Such a waste.

[Anonymous No.19384163]

>>19384071
>>19384094
maybe i should just an hero at this point if this is all i'm gonna have. it's terrifying.

[Anonymous No.19384172]

>>19384071
Yep 24/25 is when it starts and I'm sure it only gets worse from here. But 24/25 is the first age when you're able to look back on memories that were once new and fresh and realise they are now quite a long time ago and that you'll never be in that place again.

[Anonymous No.19384176]

>>19382926
the moon and the bonfires by cesare pavese

[Anonymous No.19384179]

>>19384172
Oh, this reminds me that a good answer for OP is the part of LOTR where they go back to the shire and realize they can’t go back to their normal lives and the place they get doesn’t exist anymore.

[Anonymous No.19384181]

>>19384094
That's called a midlife crisis anon.

[Anonymous No.19384190]

>>19384163
There can still be good times. The summer after I turned 24 was objectively one of the best of my life. It’s just that things didn’t work out and I’m kind of garbage, so with time things get worse.
If your life works out getting older is probably fine since there wouldn’t be a sense of lost potential.

[Anonymous No.19384202]

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting

[Anonymous No.19384205]

>>19382926
Journey to the End of the Night of course

[Anonymous No.19384209]

>>19384202
Remember to smash that remain ignorant button

[Anonymous No.19384220]

>>19384202
all you need is a plan

[Anonymous No.19384223]

>>19384094
Yeah, I’m 28 now, will be 29 in a few months. Something about this age forces you to realize not only that you’re not young anymore but also that you’re somehow a failure even though you don’t know exactly what it is your failing at.

[Anonymous No.19384242]

>>19384025

[Anonymous No.19384248]

>another 20 somethings complaining that they're old thread

[Anonymous No.19384256]

>>19384223
>you’re somehow a failure even though you don’t know exactly what it is your failing at.
Fuck.
Also we might be the exact same age.

[Anonymous No.19384381]

>>19384223
pressure from dreams and expectations of potential

[Anonymous No.19384387]

>>19384025
Could've graduated college

[Anonymous No.19384391]

>>19382926
Quentin's chapter of The Sound and the Fury especially.
Absalom, Absalom!

[Anonymous No.19384394]

>>19384179
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. Stop you're gonna give me an existential crisis

[Anonymous No.19384401]

>>19384202
What is this line from?

[Anonymous No.19384405]

Read Heidegger you subhumans.

[Anonymous No.19384407]

>>19382926
Heidegger if you can get past the dense parts

[Anonymous No.19384489]

>>19384394
just never visit your hometown and you’ll be fine

[Anonymous No.19384512]

>>19384094
speak for yourself. I dont care about ANYTHING except the virtue of my soul

[Anonymous No.19384575]

>>19384179
>We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
>But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
>With an alien people clutching their gods.
>I should be glad of another death.

[Anonymous No.19384614]

>>19384381
I’ve never had any dreams though. Maybe that’s the failure…

[N E M O . !!GgBWHLRiayD No.19385198]

>>19382926

To age is easy in this world; to live with it is complicated.

Time constitutes a particular compression of dispersed external beingness; growing accustomed to its rate is directly proportional to, either: revolutedly outgrowing it, or: convolutedly ingrowing within it; the key is to continue to aetheropressurize, thus optigregating one's abundance, and straightening oneself beyond time, rather than succumbing to the chronic rotation that is intrinsic to the kosmos, and thus crookedly festering within it.


>...dealing with [...] nostalgia?

Nostalgia is nothing other than living memory, therefore, it is what deals/works in you.

[Anonymous No.19385214]

>>19382926
The Tartar Steppe

[Anonymous No.19385219]

Most Murakami stuff is at least tangentially about this.

[Anonymous No.19385286]

>all those 20 years old talking about getting old, nostalgia and knowing your way in life

[Anonymous No.19385449]

>>19385286
It’s mostly late 20s early 30s

[Anonymous No.19385530]

>>19385449
the average /lit/ poster is 22 years old

[Anonymous No.19385553]

>>19382926
The Magic Mountain

[Anonymous No.19385608]

>>19384094
What do you do if you've been an alcoholic throughout your twenties and your body and your doctor are basically demanding that you quit? Can sobriety be a coping mechanism with the normal dread of being in your thirties with no spouse or children?

[Anonymous No.19385636]

I had the worst case of realizing my own aging the other night. Took the wife to a restaurant in the town we grew up in. Town is different from what it used to be but the restaurant is the same.

I can remember going there as a kid and loving it (it was a military themed restaurant, lots of cool memorabilia/surplus on display). Ffw 20 years and it's as it was except the owner has passed away, his widow runs it, and one of the dining areas is now used as storage due to a decline in business partially because the food isn't as good.

It was sad to see. The song Leader of the Band came on while we were eating (song about a kids dad dying after he grows up). Lady at the cash register even said "please come see us again" when we were leaving, and the way she said it sounded kinda desperate.

The staff were older women, instead of the teenagers that used to work there. It sucks cause I remember when the place used to be packed and I know that it's gonna continue to go downhill and close. It'll die, just as the leader of the band did in the song.

It hurts, and I wish I could change things. But there is nothing we can do to slow time. It is not our place to do so, no matter how much we may wish it

[Anonymous No.19385673]

>>19385530
How could they be 22 years old if I pressume is correct are highly academic and have read over 500 books?

[Anonymous No.19385680]

>>19382926
>Passing of time
To the Lighthouse
>Nostalgia
Oblomov

[Anonymous No.19385684]

>>19385673
Most people on /lit/ have read closer to 5 books than 500

[Anonymous No.19385687]

>>19385673
>/lit/
>reading books
anon, i...

[Anonymous No.19385691]

>>19382926
I remember exactly what he said too. I think about it a lot. "Marriage is a constant Hell." "The minute you put that ring on her finger all love you have for her will disappear." He is right or the divorce rate in the US wouldn't be 50%.

[Anonymous No.19385706]

>>19385530
I mean in this thread

[Anonymous No.19385710]

>>19385706
I don't see why the average age would not apply here. /lit/ posters also have an inflated view of their own maturity and wisdom.

[Anonymous No.19385711]

>>19385706
It's even lower

[Anonymous No.19385713]

>>19385691
The 50% rate counts serial marriage idiots.
For two people on their first marriage the divorce rate is much lower.

[Anonymous No.19385722]

>>19382926
Take the C-series pill
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2248314

[Anonymous No.19385926]

>>19385713
Serial marriage people marry people who have never been married before. The statistic stands

[Anonymous No.19385969]

>>19385636
Returning to my hometown after covid has been depressing. Almost everything that used to be staples as a kid is closed. Combination of declined foot traffic and landlords demanding so much money for storefront rent

[Anonymous No.19385976]

>>19384053
Nobody who is allowed to post no this site will survive this century.

[Anonymous No.19387445]

>>19385976
there are people posting on this site right now that are 15 years old and less.

[Anonymous No.19387463]

>>19382926
just say "i graduated about a year ago"

[Anonymous No.19387490]

>>19387445
>allowed

[Anonymous No.19387494]

>>19385636
>The staff were older women, instead of the teenagers that used to work there.
those ~were the teenagers that used to work there..

[Anonymous No.19387499]

>>19387463
in my early 20s i used to gauge peoples age based on their graduation year until i start interacting with people who dropped out and would get offended when i would ask "so when did you graduate again?"

[Anonymous No.19387538]

And yet, and yet... To deny temporal succession, to deny the self, to deny the astronomical universe, appear to be acts of desperation and are secret consolations. Our destiny (unlike the hell of Swedenborg and the hell of Tibetan mythology) is not terrifying because it is unreal; it is terrifying because it is irreversible and iron-bound. Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.

[Anonymous No.19387555]

>>19387499
can't think why. seems like a triumph to me to drop out

[Anonymous No.19387568]

>39 year old dropout having a good time
Feels pretty good, no nostalgia, the past is the past

[Anonymous No.19387578]

>>19385636
I accepted that my youth was dead and squandered when they replaced all the lights on the old streets me and my buddies used to hang at on summer nights. It wasn't the street lights, of course, but it's strange how just a change in lighting can tell you "this place is not for you anymore."

I don't have a future to look forward to, and there's nothing left to mourn. what do I do?

[Anonymous No.19387619]

>>19387578
I suppose all you can do is move forward and make more memories that you can look back on.
I found if you are truly having an amazing time and life is going well, you forget the times will ever pass. I want nothing more than to rewind to 2018 and be a degenerate college junior with my best friends getting into dumb shit and loving life. All those friends have moved across the globe and our interactions have reduced to a birthday call and a few sporadic texts.

[Anonymous No.19387655]

>>19387568

[N E M O . !!GgBWHLRiayD No.19387703]

>>19385286

Intuitive/subtler individuals —which "Fourchan(nel)" attracts— require less experience than empiricistic/baser ones in order to attain knowledge; regardless of this, the bodies, and sensibilities, of most Zoomers, are in cordiological dischrony with their minds, and reason, since they have been continually subjected to adulteration, and to adulterization, since their formative years, resulting in the hypersexual, and the supervagrant, burnouts you see today.

[Anonymous No.19388851]

>>19385219
Ryu or Haruki anon ?

[Anonymous No.19389002]

>>19384094
I disagree, 30s is the comfiest decade so far. Much prefer it to my 20s.

[Anonymous No.19389009]

>>19384000

Great book

[Anonymous No.19389079]

[Anonymous No.19389184]

>>19389002
Are you married with kids?

[Anonymous No.19389206]

>>19389079
When I was a kid I couldn't read this book, it made me feel this enormous dread or something at the passing of time. Good rec

[Anonymous No.19389209]

>>19384094
30's have unironically been great for me, even despite this lockdown. You literally stop caring and focus on what matters, i.e. you unironically become a 30 year old boomer.

[Anonymous No.19389214]

>>19384148
One is a book
The other is a fucking movie

[Anonymous No.19389275]

>>19389184
No I'm single but I don't have to work because of the old crypto.

[Anonymous No.19389285]

>>19389209
This is exactly what I found. All the ridiculous expectations I placed on myself in my 20s have dissapeared.

[Anonymous No.19389307]

>>19389275
Okay, cool. It’s nice to hear form people that say 30s are better but don’t have the wifenkids since that’s not on the table for me.

[Anonymous No.19389326]

>>19389307
I think it's partially the age and partially the added responsibilities in your life. I did a career switch in my late 20s/early 30s and now I'm reaping the benefits of that.

I also think you start to reframe your life around concrete worries rather than dumb expectations placed on you by your family/society/yourself/etc. It's a far better life when the only thing you have to worry about is whether or not you can finish the work you've set for yourself. It's much more miserable if you're focused on expectations, since you'll almost certainly never be able to meet them.

Basically, stop worrying about what others think and focus on shit that actually matters in your life. Turning 30 won't magically fix this, it just happens to be the age where people finally get it. I've met plenty of 40 year olds who still act like teenagers and spend all day worrying about what their peers think. Don't be like them.

[Anonymous No.19389393]

>>19389326
Yeah, that makes sense. I’m glad that I don’t have any super successful relatives that expect a lot out of me, as that seems to really trip people up.

[Anonymous No.19389463]

>>19382926

I've been a social pariah all throughout my twenties and am 27 now, and now I have bad insomnia and panic attacks. Dropped out of university too, I hated the company I was keeping and was dreading entering the workforce surrounded by the same stripe of shitty person I worked with in college. Although I regret it because now I'm stuck living with my parents doing utterly shit work (for the time being). I hide it from people but I feel like an empty husk toiling away, and the insomnia and boredom take their toll, I often will waste several days in a row unable to focus and motivate myself to do anything. Why are most people so petty and uninteresting? And why are they so unfunny?

[Anonymous No.19389484]

>>19389463
>. I hide it from people but I feel like an empty husk toiling away, and the insomnia and boredom take their toll, I often will waste several days in a row unable to focus and motivate myself to do anything. Why are most people so petty and uninteresting? And why are they so unfunny?

the ideal state should be to ignore the normies, that way you don´t give power and advantage to them, just think of pic related whenever normies makes you feel bad, trust me, i´m in the same position as you, i will be a social pariah next year but there are only two things important for me, flirting with cute girls and achieving my true will in life

[Anonymous No.19390609]

>>19382938
/thread

[Anonymous No.19390823]

>>19389209
Exactly. I can just be myself and take care of what I want, don't need to adhere to anyones expectations but my own

[Anonymous No.19390850]

>>19382926
Unironically the dune novels

[Anonymous No.19391644]

>>19382926
Brace yourself nigga, havent you heard time is a violent stream, wont leave any unmored boats to rest.

Focus on the now or youll miss it.

[Anonymous No.19391662]

>>19382926
Try meditating

[Anonymous No.19391939]

>>19382926
The Christmas Carol

[Anonymous No.19391956]

>>19388851
Haruki. I've never read Ryu but given that he's Japanese he probably fits too, the nips love this shit.

[Anonymous No.19391986]

>>19382926
The Tartar Steppe by Buzzati is exactly that.

It's a about a military officer just out of his academy training who gets to his position in a distant fort. Weeks turn into months turn into years.

[Anonymous No.19392365]

How can you feel that you’ve squandered your life when everything is so hollow? I can’t even imagine saying “I’d much rather have done such and such”

[Anonymous No.19393657]

>>19384094
25 is the age you look back and realize you can't see the shore anymore. You look forward, and there is only a vast dark expanse of water. You still have your bearings though at 25.

[Anonymous No.19393700]

>>19392365
Are you a physically fit specimen who does sports and regular exercise? Do you try to see places? Do you have any hobbies, besides from reading? Do you engage in spirituality?

[Anonymous No.19394132]

In Search of Lost Time

[Anonymous No.19394241]

>>19393657
>>19384094
>>19384071
>>19384172
You guys are so wrong, 25 is PLENTY of time to get your life in order, getting a simple work skill like nursing or trades or bus driver etc will only take you like 1 year, losing whatever weight you have unless youre 350lbs will take less than 1 year, probably less than 4 months

But its good that you are feeling panic, cause its better if you start early, your highest quality years in life are from 25-35 you want to make the best of them, from 35-45 are OK and after that its all downhill.

So dont let the fact that you have alot of time ahead to get you complacent, time moves quickly and you have the best years ahead.

Last thing: Change doesnt come over night, whatever it is thats holding you back: Weight, social anxiety, anxiety in general, shame or humiliation, depression, money. These things are very possible to overcome, only thing is it takes time. Patience is the only thing you need to accomplish these things.

So plant some good seeds now and in a year i promise you will reap very sweet fruit.

Now go young padawans, cause if you dont life will only get more miserable.

Suggested reading: Carl Jungs redbook, In the Heart of the Buddhas teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Just do something for Gods sake.