How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
by Jonathan Hilton
Why is it that we get all hung up on labeling our journey through life by the number of years we have simply existed. I have to admit, when you are young, it is a great day to be the center of attention and get some great gifts, but that changes as you age. From being kind of a neat day to becoming another discriminating notch on the journey of life.
Since I like life, publicly admitting I am one year closer to the end of this existance, is not a fun exercise. Yet even if we don’t acknowledge it in public and hide from it, we still age. If I had suddenly lost count somewhere around 22 and had no idea what my label should be, what would I guess my age to be? That is the reason for the disection of the aging process.
You Look Marvelous!
As you look at the physical self, you have to be careful because there are two ways to look at yourself. One is through what the mirror tells you, and that can be depressing if you rely on that.
Gray hair, or no hair can be a clue as to the aging process, but as I often say, (the more gray I get, the more I say it), just because there is snow on the rooftop doesn’t mean the fire isn’t burning inside.
Many people including myself, have invested so much into relating to our physical beings that we sometimes don’t think we look quite like we do. In fact, we have an image of ourselves that is quite a bit dated.
If you want a reality check sometime, take a moment, and really look into the mirror. Don’t thing about what you would change, just observe how you look. You do not look the same as you did even last year much less ten or fifteen years ago.
Accept the person that you see, enjoy what you do have and send a little love your own way. You have earned it.
That leads to the next part of this equation for me, to look at how you feel. I personally do not feel a bit different from I did 25 years ago. I don’t have the same speed, stamina, or resiliency physically, but other than that I feel exactly the same. OK so I am not 21 physically, but I am not in the retirement home, I would put my physical age at 35.
I Can’t Be As Old As I Think
Mentally I am glad that I am not back in my earlier development, because the quality of thoughts that I entertained were neither deep nor were they
all that positive. Fortunately I was not an overly negative person, but I was also clueless in my thoughts.
I was young and somewhat self-centered, so I am glad that those days are over. I would like to think that I have found a nice balance at this point in life around not only the quality of thoughts I entertain but in my acceptance and care for the rest of the world. My mental age would be 55 at least.
It is one of the trade offs you get with an older body, an older, wiser mentality. There is more understanding and a broader view of things. I can only hope the depth of thought and acceptance of others continues to grow, as the number label of age rises.
Spiritual Age
Spiritually there is no way to calculate this age because the older you get the more you understand that there is very little that we understand about life and God and spirituality. There was a time I thought I knew
what life was all about, and how we all fit in, I was sure of that.
Today as I look at those thoughts, I can see them only as steps up a winding staircase that keeps the answer hidden from me.
The more I climb the closer I feel I am to understanding, but I still can’t see what is at the top of the stairs. So I would give myself a spiritual age of 10, knowing nothing. However I am hopeful that by climbing the stairs, my intellect will increase with the experience. One can only hope.
If you average those out and divide by three you come up with an age of 33.33333333 and I guess that works for me. It is a lot younger than I actually am so it makes me feel good about this post.
By the way I am exactly 16850 days old today.
Age is just a number
In the end, the time you have been living in your life is just a number and it is up to you to decide for yourself what you think is the appropriate level of activity and amount of thought. How you treat and accept others will probably stem from this reality. All of us are facing battles each day. With the experience of age, generally comes an understanding of others.
I would encourage us to label our journey in a more relevant way, the number of kind things we do, or the positive impact we have on the world. You could be 111,000 acts of kindness, or perhaps you have been accepting of others 289,324 times. Or any other more worthwhile measure than age.
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
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