Old or Young-Depends Who You Ask

Published by Laurie on Tagged Life, Aging, Midlife, Mindset

I’ve been trying to get more organized lately and I was going through the boxes in my closet of all of my old photos. They’re completely unorganized. I ran across my class picture from 4th grade. You remember the ones where we are all standing on bleachers, with the taller kids on the top and the shorter ones on the floor, and the teacher standing on the side with the class. My teacher in 4th grade was Mrs. Lentz. Looking at the photo, I see she was an attractive middle-age woman. I’m guessing around 45 to 48 years old.

It’s funny, but before I looked again at the picture, that’s not really how I remembered her. I remembered her from a 4th graders perspective. I can remember the first day of 4th grade. She had her name on the chalkboard in nice cursive writing. And I remember thinking she was the oldest teacher I had had so far.

I can remember watching her writing assignments on the chalkboard and gazing at the loose skin on here upper arms jiggling almost hypnotically as she wrote. She seemed so old to me. I looked up to her like I would look up to any other elder of mine. She was so smart, and she carried her authority as an old and wise woman. But looking at the photo now, I was un-nerved at how young she really was at that time. She was close to what my age is now when she was my teacher…and I thought she was ancient. As I examine the photo more closely, I see not only was she middle aged, she was quite attractive and fit. How could I have remembered her so differently? It was just my perspective at the time. Not reality, but how I viewed it at that age.

I can see now how even my own children view people my age. You should see my daughter’s face when there is an erectile dysfunction commercial on the TV. She looks almost grossed out at the fact that there are 50 year olds talking about having a satisfying sex life. One time we were watching Pirate’s of the Caribbean and I made a comment to my husband about how I thought Johnny Depp was so hot. She looked like she was going to throw up! She’s 14 years old, and she views my age group as quite old. From her perspective, we’re all a bunch of crypt keepers. I can’t help but feel old at those times.

However, the same day we had watched that movie, I had stopped over my mom’s house earlier that day while my Aunt Fran was visiting. Actually, she’s my mom’s aunt, my great aunt. I hadn’t seen her in some time and she was all gushing with statements like; “Look at you, honey. You look so good” and “Oh, your still a baby!” I felt great after that little visit. I felt young.

So how can I feel so old and so young on the very same day. Nothing had changed. I had the same clothes on, same hairstyle, same make-up, and was still the same age. I was 44 years old all day that day. I’m sure of it.

It’s because I let the perspective of others, skew my sense of perspective about myself. That’s why this midlife thing is so screwy. We feel old, we feel young, we feel old again. So which is it. Are we still young or are we old? We’re both! We smack dab in the middle. One foot in youth the other in old age. Jumping around like crazy people. Middle aged crazy people.

How do we stop this schizophrenic feeling? Between youth and old age?

By getting a handle on ourselves from our own perspective. It may not be objective perspective, but is there such a thing as objectivity?

You could say my daughter is objective, since she’s outside of my age group. So I guess I’m old. But you could say my aunt is objective since she’s outside of my age group also. So there you have it, I’m young!

There is no such thing as objectivity. We view everything around us relative to ourselves. No one is ever completely objective.

As my husband would say, everything is relative. He says it all the time. He starts his sentences with “relatively speaking”. He knows I hate it, but then he goes on to say I hate it so much because I know he’s right. It’s so irritating. But enough of that, I’m getting off topic. A discussion about the irritating things my husband says to me is an entire blog unto itself.

Back to what I was saying. We have only one perspective to perceive ourselves and others. And it is relative. Relative to ourselves. All we can do is discard the input from those older and younger than us and view ourselves as how we feel from own unique perspective. When we look in the mirror, do we feel old or young? For me it depends on how I feel at that moment.

The concept is not unique to midlife, when I was in my 20’s there were times I felt old, and I’m sure that when I reach my 80’s there will be times when I feel young and vibrant. (at least I hope so). However I do think for the most part when we are young we feel young, and when we are old, we feel old most of the time, but in midlife is right down the middle. Alternately feeling young, then old and that’s ok. As long as it’s relative to our own feelings, not how others perceive us but how we perceive ourselves. I guess it really is true….you’re only as old as you feel!!

Let’s not go back to high school and worry about how we are perceived by others, been there done that (another advantage of middle age).

So if you ask me if I perceive myself as being young, the answer is a resounding yes, and if you ask me if I feel old, the answer is the same. How crazy is that?

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