“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
That’s how I felt about getting into TTRPGs. I’m struggling to DM from published material and then I watch Matt Mercer assemble a world piece by piece from just his mind. Feels kinda intimidating but I keep reminding myself of the time gap of experience and realize that I can be that cool too given a little time
In my experience as a player, your players aren’t expecting you to be Mercer. They also aren’t on any of his professional players “level” either. Besides they’re having more fun than if you were Mercer because they’re actually getting to play with they’re friends, and that’s worth more than all of Mercer/Brennan/Aabria/Murph’s DM experience combined.
Use and open chord tuning and you can strum simple songs with a single finger. Keith Richards has severe arthritis but he uses five strings on his guitar instead of six, and has it tuned to Open C. The Rolling Stones recently released a new album.
It takes just 5 years for doing a law degree. Laws are supposed to be followed by everyone!
“Cops don’t need to know the law to enforce it, but everyone else needs to follow the law.”
-SCOTUS
…plus undergrad, which is kind of an important part of the degree.
Toxic positivity aside, there are opportunity windows in your life for various options, but they do close at some point.
So the last panel is spot on.
The only time you’re too old to learn something new is when your brain is failing. Any other time you’re just quitting before you start.
My dad’s 74 and just started taking piano lessons.
And that is great, don’t get me wrong, but what are the chances he’s going to make it big?
Of course, that doesn’t matter as long as it makes him happy. But if there was an overton window for “success” it has almost certainly passed.
If your definition of success is “making it big” then you’re pretty much guaranteed to be disappointed, especially as that evaluation relates to what should be considered a hobby. Music isn’t something even a lot of professional musicians can make a living doing. Depending on what you mean by big then it’s possible that only a handful of people ever made it that far. That’s not a realistic goal to set for yourself in any endeavor.
My wife is a profesional musician who has received a number of accolades. Just from her connections, I have been stunned at how many “internationally known” musicians (within the field, not necessarily known to the layperson), with impressive histories, mostly get by doing tons of small scale gig work. Or who have to keep a completely separate day job to pay the bills (as my wife does).
People think they understand how much of a moonshot “making it big” in music is, but most truly don’t. It’s like winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning twice, plus a lot of sacrificing normal stuff from your life, and a whole lot of it depends on luck and things completely unrelated to your technical skill at musical performance.
It’s not toxic positivity to suggest that someone pick up a hobby when they’re no realistic chance of “making it big” in that hobby. Most hobby don’t have a “make it big” component and those that do 99% of people don’t make it so with your attitude why start at 3 either?
Kids who start guitar at three: …
Parents who start their kids on guitar at three: “HE’S GONNA BE POPULAR!”Kids who start guitar at 28: “This is pretty relaxing.”
Some things are really impossible, like becoming an Olympic athlete or an astronaut, but most things are pretty reasonable to be done at any age. One can become an artist, a scientist, an entrepreneur, and a lot of things at any age.
In practical terms I’m equally likely to make it big picking up an instrument today as I was as a child.
Toxic positivity?
The idea that realistically acknowledging that at a certain age certain pursuits are no longer realistic is defeatist or a personal failing is toxic. I absolutely applaud anybody who decides they are actually going to take a new hobby at an advanced age. That’s fantastic and I wish them the best of luck. But the idea that NOT doing so and acknowledging that being older DOES impact your ability to do new things puts needless shame onto people for being realistic about age and ability. It’s ABSOLUTELY okay, and I’d even say brave, to accept the limitations of one’s abilities due to age, and yes, it is toxic to turn around and say, indirectly, “Gee, I guess you’re just a weak-minded quitter.”
Calling someone a quitter, defeatist, etc., is not positivity, and I don’t think positive encouragement (in most cases) counts as indirectly saying they’re a quitter if they don’t do the thing.
I agree, but the implication of the comic is that the man is somehow being contradictory or incorrect in thinking it is too late to start learning. Perhaps not, but there is nothing shameful or inconsistent about his assertion that it’s too late now. There ARE legitimate and concerning differences between starting at his age and starting in youth.
Absolutely right. Your time at 40 when you’ve got responsibilities, a full-time job (or two), TIME ITSELF is going more quickly for you, and you have generally less energy is NOT the same as when you’re young and have more or less limitless capacity for this kind of thing.
Although it’s a popular sentiment among 20 year olds who think their energy is going to last forever, or 30 year olds who have good enough genes where they’re not slowing down yet.
That’s not to say it’s impossible. Some people can do it. But the number of people with that energy drops PRECIPITOUSLY with age.
But it’s nice of the wholesome comic to tell you that if you’re getting older, and your energy is reducing like every single generation of humans in the history of time, and you don’t have the capacity or energy left to do everything you want, that’s a personal failing and it’s your fault and you should feel shame.
You have less energy, but you also have more experience in how to approach new topics and sometimes experiences that can be translated and help with learning.
Sometimes, sure. not always. If you happen to have spent the past few decades doing something with relevance to the new skill you’re planning to work on, of course that’s going to contribute to your ability to learn that thing now. But that’s a nice coincidence, not a general improvement in ability to obtain new skills with age.
In the case of learning guitar, if I spent the past 25 years working in real-estate, for example, unless I coincidentally spent a lot of free time doing things that increased my hand dexterity, coordination, built up callouses, etc, I haven’t really made any more progress towards that goal than I would’ve had at 9 years old, and furthermore in a very real sense 25 years of life plus my age have contributed just as much in ingraining irrelevant and sometimes contradictory knowledge and skills into an increasingly inelastic mind in such a way that if my life experiences contribute more than hinder my learning at that age, I’d consider it a happy accident more than a natural benefit.
Sure it depends on how you spend your life and what you want to learn. I can speak from my experience as someone who likes to learn and try out new things and I just become more efficient at learning, knowing better what ways of learning suits me better how to get knowledge, not get frustrated, how to stay motivated etc. . When I was younger I would be much easier demotivated by slow progress or feeling of not having a talent, now I just care much less.
Sure. Lifetime learning is extremely valuable and a great way to spend time. But there’s a huge difference between building out new skills in areas you already have expertise and ability or loosely connected areas, and starting something completely new where you have very little training or knowledge. I can sit and learn new programming languages all day, and that is learning, and my prior experience is incredibly useful in doing that. But if I were to pick up a guitar, or a paintbrush, or start a gymnastics class? The idea that I can learn these things from essentially zero with even CLOSE to the proficiency of a young person is extremely wishful thinking, and it isn’t unreasonable that at an advanced age, the amount of time and energy I can put into it will never yield results I’d consider satisfactory. My point is, there’s nothing wrong or defeatist about saying “This is no longer a reasonable goal for me”, and the comic’s implication that it’s a mental weakness is condescending and simplistic.
When I was younger I didn’t pick up any music instrument since I thought I had no music talent. Later in life I stop caring and picked up percussion and some overtone flute, just for my self and I have real fun with it and don’t care that I have no talent and won’t be a great musician. That was possible because I learned to manage my expectation and not get frustrated if I’m not really good at something - a skill that I did not have when I was younger.
Nothing wrong with not wanting to learn new things, but no need to hide behind no being able to - just own it.
At that point it does depend on your goals. I have always wanted to play jazz piano, but it is absolutely impossible at my age to reach a level of proficiency that would satisfy me. Taking on the learning would be pouring a woefully insufficient amount of free time into an effort that at my advanced age would yield INCREDIBLY slow process only to be continually frustrated for the effort.
If my goal were to just play around with it and have fun? Sure. But this comic’s protagonist is lamenting the loss of DECADES of experience. He’s not looking to strum a guitar in his free time. He’s looking for real proficiency. And there is no shame in his acknowledging that at some point, you are old enough where it is no longer realistically achievable.
But how much of the lack of energy and time comes from the age, and how much from the demands of our society? I’ve seen a lot of over stressed burnouted people talking about how they can’t do several things anymore, and blaming their age, but no one can feel energic when under severe pressure. They didn’t have that same pressure when younger.
While that point is valid, identifying it doesn’t make that pressure go away. If the idea is “You’d have plenty of energy to learn guitar if you just shun all of your responsibilities and sacrifice the already precarious stability of your life for more free time/start a revolution and restructure the entire nature of society”, then I don’t disagree, but you’re talking about something way more substantial and difficult than a flippant comic strip implying it’s an easy matter of “just doing it.”
I can see your point too. I also dislike the “you can just do it” thinking that ignores the person’s situation. Our pressures won’t simply go away by acknowledging them. However, I think it’s worth separating our obstacles and not attributing everything to age, or we take the risk of creating more age-related stigma in our society.
Fair.
Learning and starting new things is a skill of it self, it gets less scary the more you do it. Obviously helps if you started earlier to develop a habit of not being afraid if new things - so there is some kind of catch in there.
Here’s another approach the question as we age: Is this really what I ought to do with the limited time I have left?
I started playing at 14. I am now 36 and am a extremely proficient player. A good friend of mine has been playing since he physically could hold a guitar, effectively his entire life. While he is a far superior musician to me, the difference between our abilities can only really be seen in the extremely minut details, details only other musicians can notice. We’re effectively peers.
My point is that it’s never too late to start playing music. The world begins to suck a little less when a new musician is born.
😄
Damn! This is very sad!
OP, the entire point of this is that he’s not too old now.
