30 Of The Best Posts And Memes To Celebrate The Wild ’90s (New Pics)

Dr. Anthony Synnott, author of The Body Social, says we're mostly afraid of aging because we are worried about death and the fact that we don't know what comes after.

"We may believe we do, but people have such widely divergent beliefs in reincarnation, the Islamic Paradise, the Christian hell or heaven with the Beatific Vision, or just nothing — and it is hard to imagine one's nothingness!" Synnott tells Bored Panda.

Of course, there's also "the aging prior to that" and the image of "a long, drawn out, painful illness, with medical staff reluctant to give you enough morphine in case you get addicted."

Thoughts about accelerating physicaland cognitive decline (which Synnott talks about on his Psychology Today blog), dementia, and Alzheimer's give us "plenty to fear and worry about, quite apart from medical expenses in the US leading many to leave the hospital to go home and die so that they can leave something to their families or charities rather than to for-profit hospitals."

But what about the positives? Well, "one might say [it gives us] more experience and therefore greater wisdom, but for whom?" the sociologist asks.

"My sons know more than me about modern life, and my five grandsons are generally not interested in the rare advice I might give and more in their friends, sports, and machines — as I was at their age and, unfortunately, later."

In practical terms, Synnott believes there are some gains to be made with aging "in terms of pensions and reduced fares, etc., but [they're] not enough, in my experience, to balance the negatives."

So what does a person have to do with all of this? Well, we have to accept that some things are simply out of our control. Synnott says one has to learn to be a bit philosophical and use the "It is what it is" mindset more than grumbling.

All of this might sound (a little) grim, especially while scrolling through some '90s memes, but refusing to think and talk about what awaits us can hurt us even more. Plus, we '90s kids have largely entered the age of hair loss and back problems, so there's no reason to fool ourselves.

We humans have found ways to extend life but often at the cost of personal autonomy. Ignoring the problems leaves us unprepared for the realities of aging and dying.

As for nostalgia, it can serve a number of purposes. Psychologist Dr. Krystine Batcho, who has been extensively studying it, argues that the thing that ties them all together is that nostalgia is an emotional experience that unifies — it helps to unite our sense of who we are, our self, our identity over time. Collective and individual.

We change constantly, sometimes in incredible ways, too. We're not anywhere near the same as we were when we were three years old, for example. Nostalgia, by motivating us to remember the past in our own life, helps us to connect to our authentic selves and remind us of who we have been and then compare that to who we feel we are today.