(Alex 17 here. The text below is from the past and counts as compromising information. This is not the real me (anymore))
It’s no new idea if I say that I’m afraid if someone who’s dear to me dies. But I’m not as much afraid of someone dying as much as I’m afraid of the person getting older. I imagine losing someone as ripping off a band-aid, whereas seeing someone getting older, slowly losing their mind and falling into bad habits, is getting tortured by time.
There’s something else that makes ‘getting older’ more scary than ‘death’. Imagine having a figure in your life, let’s say your grandmother. She has taught you cooking, making friends and so much more. She taught you to stay away from your phone because it’s unhealthy and unnecessary. Some time goes by, you grow up and you notice your grandmother spending more and more time on her phone, frying her brain, so to speak. This makes not only her advice about the phone irrelevant but also about everything else she’s taught you. That’s why people say you have to be a good example, but we can’t help but fall in to bad habits as we get older.
To come back to my intro, death is black and white, a person is either death or not. Getting older is slowly watching a person reach their death, losing the person not only physically but also mentally, which makes it a torture.
In life we need to be like hamster, stuffing our cheeks with memories and people before they disappear.
Conclusion: the key to happiness is being a hamster.