Time goes by

I just realized that five years have now passed since I started working here. Originally I planned to work here for two to three years and then say goodbye to Finland. I was afraid that I would get stuck here for my whole life. So what happened? Why am I still here? There are several reasons. Most importantly I started enjoying living here and therefore the need to move somewhere else started to wane. I had always liked this town even though winters seemed to last too long. I also started to feel comfortable at my job, not that I enjoyed it much but I learnt how to make work done without much effort (of course this could not be always the case). So even though during these years I did browse jobs abroad from various countries, read immigration pages and every now and then wondered where would I like to live most – there was no impulse which would have sent me away. Still, if there had been such impulse I could have just moved away without looking back.

As people get older they tend to stick with things they have once found to work. They rarely try out new things or adopt new ideas. I am not sure how many people notice this effect on themselves. I think there has been little bit this kind of change in me, for example at work, if possible, I often just put myself on “automatic gear” instead of really taking fresh and focused approach to the problem. I also like watching same old movies & TV series which I have already seen many times before. Or reading books that I have enjoyed reading in the past. However, I am not sure if these last two things have anything to do with aging though as I have always been like that.

What is mental aging really? Do people automatically start acting differently as they think something is not appropriate anymore at certain age? Do people observe how other people of similar age act and behave and then copy that model to their own life? Does the input for change come mostly from inside or from outside? Now that I think about it, age does not seem to affect to my doings. I am doing the same things which I did when I was half of my age. I do think differently but I still find same things enjoyable as I did back then. Will I still enjoy watching Dawson’s Creek after, let’s say, 20 years? That remains to be seen but I tend to believe that some things never change.