What you lose as you age: from high jumps to deep sleep

From high jumps to deep sleep: what age takes away

There comes a moment when you squat down, stand up without using your hands, and realize you can’t anymore. It’s not a metaphor; it’s the first warning. From there, the list grows. A man who ran at a 6:30 min/km pace until he was 60 admits that now, if he starts running, he manages only 7 minutes and struggles to keep going. Another, who used to balance on ladders to paint apartments, has bought a long-handled roller to avoid breaking a bone. The discussion about what we leave behind with age—started in an economics forum and lasting 95 days—ultimately sketches a precise inventory of physical decline, but also of another kind.

The body warns before the mind does

The first spontaneous response is physical. Squatting without hands. Jumping 1.40 meters. Having sens three times in one night, or six, and settling for three a month. Sweating like a weightlifter just painting a wall. Sleeping through the night. Reading small print without glasses. Some focus on hearing loss, while others confess that what hurts most is being unable to read fine print: “If I had to choose between having sens three times in a night again and seeing clearly, I’d choose seeing clearly.”

The interesting detail is that deterioration isn’t linear or uniform. Several accounts agree that **up to age 60, people hold up reasonably well** and that the collapse comes later. A specific medical suspicion arises: someone points to the **thyroid** and suggests specific tests, because hypothyroidism causes fatigue and often appears around age 50. The advice is given without diagnosis: the person offering it isn’t a doctor, but the clue circulates.

Fatigue that doesn’t explain itself with age

This is the point that causes the most discomfort. A person who does gymnastics, tai chi, and weights daily admits they still feel weak and don’t understand why. The most repeated answer isn’t physical: it’s the **loss of vital energy**. “It’s energy you had inside that told you could do anything,” someone summarizes. Another puts it more bluntly: before, you thought about doing something; now, you think about how much time and effort it will cost you.

That fatigue mixes with disillusionment. Some say they’ve stopped getting excited, believing in others, or even trusting relatives. “Everyone stabbed me in the back whenever they could,” writes someone who adds that the more they helped, the worse they were treated. Solitude appears as a refuge and distrust as the norm. It’s not a general thesis, it’s a testimony, but it repeats frequently enough to be taken seriously.

Work, TV, and politicians

The list of things we stop doing includes items unrelated to biology. Working hard. Working for the enemy. Watching TV, which disturbs many. Tolerating fools. Listening to politicians: “I couldn’t care less about what they say; I’m only interested in what they do.” Some have stopped getting passionately angry because they’ve become more reflective, and others have stopped drinking alcohol without anyone asking, simply because they no longer like it.

The pattern repeats: it’s not all incapacity; there’s also choice. Several distinguish between “can’t” and “choose not to.” And here arises the sharpest objection: the difference between zero and something is brutal, much greater than between something and what it once was. In other words, recovering half of lost capacity is worth more than mourning the other half.

Technology as a wall

There’s a border that’s neither physical nor emotional: the technological one. Someone admits they no longer understand what an NFT is, how cryptocurrencies work, half of their phone’s functions, or a car with cameras and screens everywhere. “Before, I could program the VCR without looking at instructions, regardless of the brand.” It’s not that they don’t want to. It’s that they can’t. The digital divide, seen firsthand, has less to do with age than with the estimulante ilegal of change.

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The complete list, with its nuances and contradictions, remains open. What emerges isn’t so much a catalog of ailments as a portrait: that of a generation that has replaced “I can’t” with “I don’t feel like it” and, deep down, still measures its vitality by what it was capable of at twenty. The unsettling fact isn’t any of the previous ones: it’s that **the 1.40-meter high jump** remains there, in memory, as a border no one knows when they crossed.