Age is a funny thing. It’s the cause of stress and worry, a source of revenue for the cosmetics industry, and the subject of many amusing birthday cards. When we’re young, all we want is to look older (especially before we turn 21). Then at some point, usually around 30, we begin to want the exact opposite, and we’ll do almost anything to look younger than our age. Asking a woman her age is considered an insult, and many women dread certain milestone birthdays more than a root canal. Men and women alike fear the onset of gray hair because of what it symbolizes.
Really though, age is just a number, and I don’t think that one number truly encapsulates who we are. We were born a certain number of years ago, but there’s more to our age than that number. I am lucky enough to have spent almost 24 years on this Earth so far. But, it is not the number 24 alone that defines those years. Until recently, I had the back of an 80-year old. For years, I was in constant pain that ranged from annoying to excruciating. It expanded from just my muscles to my nerves over the past year, a result of hours in the car each day driving to and from work. Now that I live in the city and do a ton of walking, I can happily say that I’ve probably knocked 50 years off of my back’s age. Pretty amazing, although it’s still older than the rest of me.
To go even further, what about our mental age? We’ve all heard phrases like, “wise beyond her years,” and ” he’s grown up too fast.” I think our mental age is just as important as our physical age, if not more so. But, it’s not really a set number that we can calculate. Our mental age is made up of a lot of factors: life experience, maturity, knowledge, understanding, etc. If you’ve ever looked into the eyes of a teenage mother, or a child living on the street, you have seen their true age reflected there. Tough times, no matter their scale, force young people to grow up. Their physical age doesn’t increase any faster, they don’t shoot up several inches in a matter of minutes, but inside they change.
I may look back at this post when I’m turning 30 and laugh at myself, but right now I contend that age is just a number. At the end of August, I will be 24 years old, but this is not the only way I measure my life. I like to celebrate birthdays, mine and everyone else’s, because a birthday is a sweet reminder that we have been blessed with another year. No matter what happened in that year, we lived it. We don’t know how many of those years we’ll have, so why waste time worrying about how many we’ve had already? Age is only a number, so let’s just make the most of every day.
