This, That, and the Other

For today’s Sunday Poser, Sadje wants to know…

How do you feel about your age? Do you like the age you are now? Do you feel you’re at a better place now than when you were younger?

If Sadje had asked this question 14 months ago my answer would have been very different than it is now. Back then, before I broke my hip and my arm, I very much liked the age I was at. I didn’t feel my age and I didn’t think I looked my age. Flash forward to today and I not only feel older, I look older.

But that’s because I stupidly fell off a ladder last January and busted a hip and an arm. So now I need a cane to get around and I’m limited in both the distance and time that I can walk without pain and fatigue.

It’s funny that in my dreams I’m always younger and able-bodied. Then I wake up and have to reach for my cane in order to hobble to the bathroom. So my answer to today’s Sunday Poser is that I AM OLD and I wish were — or at least felt — younger.

Let’s get philosophical about age for a minute.

About a decade ago, in July of 2014, one of the WordPress Daily Prompts said “age is just a number” and then asked whether it’s a number we care about or ignore.

I responded to the prompt on my old blog with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post about the wonderfulness of senior discounts. Don’t get me wrong; senior discounts are great. But I avoided answering the question.

What I am finding out is that, while age may just be a number, it is also a label. It labels me as part of a group. I’m a Baby Boomer. I’m a Gen-Xer, a Gen-Yer, a Millennial, a Gen-whatever.

I’m a child. I’m an adolescent. I’m a young adult. I’m middle aged. I’m a senior citizen. My age categorizes and classifies me as something. But is that really what I am? Is that all I am?

Okay, so based upon my age, I actually am a “senior citizen.” But what does that tell you about who I am? What I believe? How I’m supposed to behave?

One blogger on whose posts I comment frequently was blown away when he found out how old I am. He had no idea that I wasn’t around his age — and he’s a whole lot younger than I am. I mean, seriously, a lot younger.

That made me feel good, but at the same time, it saddened me. I guess the expectation is that because I’m a senior citizen, I’m supposed to act and sound and even write my age — simply because I am that age.

But while my hair may have turned gray and then fallen out never to return to its former glory, and while my vision isn’t as good as it used to be, and while my hearing is not as acute as it used to be, and while I have wrinkles where my skin was once smooth, and while I can’t run as fast or sleep as well or eat all the crap I used to be able to eat without repercussions, in my mind I don’t feel a day older than I did when I was a “young adult.”

But because of my age, because I’m identified as a senior citizen, people’s expectations of me are different from those for people who are a different age than am I.

And I guess, just as I do with my tinnitus, my failing hearing, and my balding head, I will just learn to live with it.

Age is what it is — a label to which people attach meaning.