Why do so many people have an immediate, intuitive grasp of this highly abstract concept called “subjective age?” As Jennifer Senior in a recent Atlantic article suggests, “Most of us don’t believe ourselves to be shorter or taller than we actually are. We don’t think of ourselves as having smaller ears or longer noses or curlier hair…Yet we seem to have an awfully rough go of locating ourselves in time.”
Adults over 40 perceive themselves to be, on average, about 20 percent younger than their actual age. So, if you’re 60, that means you think of yourself as 48. How about you? And, then, there’s the even more interesting question: How old do you wish you were?
I have a friend who says, “You’re only as old as the people you surround yourself with.” But, he’s a bit of a lurker for young women. So, I’m not sure that’s the proper metric to understand subjective age. Financier Bernard Baruch said: “To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.” That seems about right for those of us over the age of 50. But, beware of going to a school reunion as it will remind you just how old you are!
The social science research is pretty clear. Younger people – under 25 – tend to say they feel older than they are. The exact opposite of older people. Here’s my hypothesis. When you’re perceived as “growing” (mostly physically) in adolescence and early adulthood, you want to be in the 99th percentile plus there’s benefits in looking older. When you’re perceived as “aging” which may start in one’s late 20s, you want to feel and look younger than you are. Don’t believe me? Just know that in Africa – where age is a prized possession – there’s almost no subjective age and in the U.S. which is a hyper-ageist culture, we have one of the highest subjective age discrepancies in the world.
What if growing and aging are the same thing? We’re comfortable saying to a 15-year-old, “My, how you’ve grown!,” but we’d never say that to a 65-year-old. And, of course, we will never say to that 15-year-old, “Wow, you’ve aged since I last saw you.”
When does growing stop and aging begin? Is it 25, 45, 65? That’s a loaded question because it suggests you can’t grow and age simultaneously.
Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly forty years, I know the majesty of a towering redwood, the tallest tree on the planet. They can span more than 400 feet, which is taller than a 37-story skyscraper. A typical redwood lives for 500 to 700 years, although some have been documented to be more than 2,000 years old, meaning that some of the coastal redwoods living today were alive during the Roman Empire. Not only that, but coastal redwoods have been on the planet for more than 240 million years. That means they’ve been around since the time of dinosaurs.
We have wrinkles. Trees have rings. These growth rings not only tell us its age, they offer clues about the climate conditions the tree lived through. Our wrinkles are the same. The only difference is that we don’t grow taller as we acquire more wrinkles, whereas trees continue to both age and grow.
When it comes to nature, we marvel at the grace and majesty of the old. We see the trees that stretch to the heavens, enraptured with their beauty and “old growth.”
What if we applied that same thinking to older humans? What if we looked at them (and ourselves) and saw the grace and beauty that comes with age? And what if we saw their wrinkles as testimony to their internal growth – the growth of heart, spirit, and soul – like we do the rings of a tree? How many rings do you have inside of you?
Tragically, when we apply the term “old growth” to humans, it sounds like an oxymoron. Old people don’t grow; they just die. Yet, every living thing dies at some point and most animals and trees wear their years just like we do.
Growing and aging are not mutually exclusive, neither in redwoods nor in humans. In the forest, growth requires regeneration: of old leaves, of old branches, of anything that needs composting. In humans, it requires the regeneration of old ideas, old identities, of any part of our life that needs reimagining. It is that cycle of life and death that makes an ecosystem so fresh and alive.
So, if we could realize that our earthly carcass (the body) isn’t the only way to measure growth, we’d realize that our hearts and souls continue to learn and grow all the way up to our last breath. And, that’s when we would realize that “old” and “growth” can be synonymous.
What if you were to make a list of all the ways you’re still growing today. Once you’ve finished that list, make a list of all the ways you hope you’re still growing near the end of your life.
-Chip
P.S. Lots of articles coming out these days on “what is midlife?” since it’s a part of the map of life that has invisible boundaries. You might appreciate this Allure article that hints what I (and many academics believe in a world where more of us will become centenarians): middle age is the bridge between early adulthood and later adulthood so maybe it’s 35-75.