Age is just a number, or so they say, but isn’t that just another way of side-stepping the question of how old we really are. Life is measured in terms of milestones and each milestone is associated with a number, so why not now? Remembering milestones is easy; your first day of school, entering your teen years, learning how to drive, graduating from high school and of course turning twenty-one. Monumental occasions, each and every one of them. After twenty-one time slowed down, although in retrospect it seemed to speed up, and before we knew it we were thinking in terms of “down-hill” or “over the hill.” Milestones, while more interesting, were not nearly as exciting as they used to be.
Age has never been “just a number,” age has always been “the number,” until now. When is it that we officially become old? I wrote to a friend the other day, complaining that I had inadvertently gone to the grocery store on “senior discount” day. Horror of horrors, the place was packed with “old” people; the aisles were jammed with browsers moving at a snail’s pace, carts laden with portable oxygen tanks, and so many scooters that I feared for my life when I reached the end of each aisle. Well, I muscled through but vowed I wouldn’t go back on the middle Wednesday of the month ever again.
When did I start separating myself out from the rest of the pack? I certainly qualify, age-wise, but it made me wonder why I wasn’t willing to accept that I am one of “them.”
We are lucky that today age is defined by degrees of health and well-being rather than being assigned a random number. I find this quite empowering; we are more than justified if we don’t want to play the numbers game.
So, what about that number? If we can learn to deal with the physical challenges associated with getting older we can do anything. It is nice that we no longer have to define ourselves by how old we are, but rather by what we are doing.
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