In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us. — Josh Billings

In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.

Author: Josh Billings

Insight: There's a shift that happens somewhere between your twenties and your sixties that this captures perfectly. When you're young, you chase things—jobs, relationships, ambitions—and you crash into obstacles along the way. You choose the hard path, or at least you feel like you're choosing. There's energy in it, even when it hurts. But somewhere down the line, you realize the difficulties aren't things you're running toward anymore. They just arrive. Your body changes without permission. People you love get sick or leave. Opportunities don't knock the way they used to. You're standing still in more ways than you'd like, and life's complications find you whether you're looking for them or not. It's not about ambition meeting resistance—it's about time itself becoming the obstacle. What makes this observation sting a little is how it suggests a loss of agency, but maybe there's something freeing in accepting it. If difficulties are going to find you anyway, the question stops being "how do I avoid them?" and becomes "how do I meet them?" That shift alone—from running toward life to receiving it—might be the most honest part of getting older.