What’s My Age Again?
My friends say I should act my age
What’s my age again?
What’s my age again?
~ Blink 182
I turned 44 not long ago. Quietly and without fanfare. It was not that I was trying to avoid it, but maybe just trying to let is sneak by unnoticed…
Earlier this year, my friend Larry and I had a conversation about age. It went a lot like this:
Me: I’m still young, lots of time!
Him: What’s your definition of young?
Me: A state of mind, heart and body?
Him: So that means a bright active 85 year old runner is young even though he doesn’t have plenty of time…
Me: Ok, so at what age is someone no longer young regardless of attitude or health? Who is young? Are you young?
Him: No – I am not. Is a 30 yr old young? A 20 yr old? Who is young? And middle age means just that, I won’t live to be over a 100 so I am not middle age I am older then that.
Food for thought right? We live in a youth-oriented culture. Young is a commodity, and aging is a thing we hide at the cost of hair dye, Botox, and perhaps even self-deception. Think about this carefully now: are you young? Really?
Regardless of how we see ourselves, our age is our age. It’s a real number. Just like others that we try to avoid.
I could tell you that one motivation for me to keep up with a pretty aggressive exercise regimen is to stave off time – and there is truth to that. Physical aging happens more quickly in those who don’t actively exercise. And being frankly sedentary will – as many studies now tell us – kill you sooner than otherwise expected.
I rarely feel old, and I am used to being told that I look younger than my years…enough so that sometimes I can fool myself. But if you exercise enough – long enough, hard enough – your age will become more clear.
The first day I walked into a CrossFit class it was intimidating. There was a lot of gear I had never seen and finishing up was a class of exhausted, sweating looking people doing things that I was pretty sure my body was not designed to do. But this is me…I’ll try anything once.
Twice even. Continue reading…