I asked my grandpa what it felt like to grow old. Grandpa is a man who will deliberate on which part of the newspaper to start with each morning, so I knew my question would take him some time to answer. I said nothing. I let him gather his thoughts.

When I was a boy, Grandpa had once complimented me on this habit. He told me it was good that I asked a question and gave a person silence. And being that any compliment from him was so few and far between, this habit soon became a part of my personality and one that served me well.

Grandpa stared out the window and looked at the empty bird feeder that hung from an overgrown tree next to the pond he built in the spring of 1993. For twenty years, Grandpa filled up the feeder each evening. But he stopped doing it last winter when walking became too difficult for him.

Without ever taking his eyes from the window, he asked me a question: “Have you ever been in a hot shower when the water ran cold?” I told him I had.

“That’s what aging feels like. In the beginning of your life it’s like you’re standing in a hot shower. At first the water is too warm, but you eventually grow used to the heat and begin enjoying it. But you take it for granted when you’re young and think it’s going to be this way forever. Life goes on like this for some time.”

Grandpa looked at me with those eyes that had seen so much change in this world. He smiled and winked at me.

“And if you’re lucky, a few good looking women will join you in the shower from time to time.”

We laughed. He looked out the window and continued on.

“You begin to feel it in your forties and fifties. The water temperature declines just the slightest bit. It’s almost imperceptible, but you know it happened and you know what it means. You try to pretend like you didn’t feel it, but you still turn the faucet up to stay warm. But the water keeps going lukewarm. One day you realize the faucet can’t go any further, and from here on out the temperature begins to drop. And everyday you feel the warmth gradually leaving your body.”

Grandpa cleared his throat and pulled a stained handkerchief from his flannel shirt pocket. He blew his nose, balled up the handkerchief, and put it back in his pocket.

“It’s a rather helpless feeling, truth told. The water is still pleasant, but you know it will soon become cold and there’s nothing you can do about it. This is the point when some people decide to leave the shower on their own terms. They know it’s never going to get warmer, so why prolong the inevitable? I was able to stay in because I contented myself recalling the showers of my youth. I lived a good life, but still wish I hadn’t taken my youth for granted. But it’s too late now. No matter how hard I try, I know I’ll never get the hot water back on again.”

He paused for a few moments and kept looking out the window with those eyes that had seen ninety-one years on this Earth. Those eyes that lived through the Great Depression, those eyes that beheld the Pacific Ocean in World War II, those eyes that saw the birth of his three children, five grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

He had indeed lived a good life, I thought to myself.

“And that’s what it feels like to grow old.”Sozaiix3, /r/AskReddit/

The post I got this from is here. Sozaiix3 is not the originator but the source has since vanished.

[The Matrix] was a good movie, but the Wachowskis could have made it a much better mind fuck.

Mind fuck #1:

Smith explains to Neo that Morpheus has it all wrong. Humans made the world uninhabitable and the robots are saving the human race in the only way they can. That business of harvesting humans for energy doesn’t even make sense. Someday, the world will be habitable again and the human race can come out of its pods.

Smith doesn’t hate humans, he just hates Morpheus and his gang of vandals because they’re interfering with the work of saving the human race. The robots look at Morpheus the way doctors look at anti-vaxxers during a measles epidemic.

Now Neo has to figure out who’s telling the truth.

Mind fuck #2:

At the end of the second movie, Neo uses his magic matrix powers to knock down some robots, even though that shouldn’t be possible outside the matrix. This is never explained.

My explanation: Zion is just another matrix. One created to house the humans who are too paranoid to accept life in the main matrix. This is hinted at by Smith, who points out that the original matrix was too nice, and people didn’t believe it. (“We lost entire crops.”). Actually, that first “paradise” matrix still exists, and most people still live there. Neo’s matrix only houses that portion of humanity that couldn’t handle paradise. Zion houses the people who can’t even handle the mundane matrix.

So the third movie should have been about Neo solving the riddle of the Zion matrix. I wonder if the Wachowskis originally had this in mind, but chickened out.capilot, /r/AskReddit/

The original thread is here.