Feeling My Age

So, how old am I supposed to feel?  A young friend recently asked me how old I feel.  Well, do I feel my age?  Fifty-eight?(who knew?).  How is fifty-eight supposed to feel?  I could say that I don't feel any different from when I was seventeen.  But that would be a lie.  There were only three hundred sixty-five days when I could feel seventeen, followed by the three hundred sixty-five days when I could feel eighteen, and not a day less or more, then three hundred sixty-six days for feeling nineteen (it was leap year and by the way, I was born on Leap Year Day.  Yeah, no kidding) followed by three hundred sixty-five days for feeling twenty.  I have been fifty-eight for 190 days.  Exactly.

We think that we either remain the same throughout our lives or that we change, grow then deteriorate as we age.  There is some truth to this but I think it has its limits.  You see, I don't feel like the same person I was as a teenager, nor in my twenties, thirties or forties.  I don't feel like the same person I was yesterday.  I am not the same person I will be tomorrow.  Yet there is a consistent sameness of perception and experience.  I am always in the same control tower but the person I am is always flying in a different plane.

Our environment, our families, the period we live in, our geography, climate, our nationality, ethnicity, race, our language, gender, sexual identity, the state of our health, our stage of life, our marital status our level of intelligence, the events of our day and our world, our employment, micro-economics and macro-economics, our politics, education, taste in music, our peer groups and friends, our religious faith, spirituality, and more, all these things shape and form us and then they continue to shape and form us.  We also remain the same but not in a static state.  We simply believe and invent these fictions for ourselves and those around us in order to maintain a sense of consistency and predictability without which it becomes very difficult for us to navigate life.

Each person is a city, a state, a nation, a world, a universe.  Each person is a story, a narrative, a novel, a play and an epic. Yet we are always in a state of perpetual transition and transformation, a dance between motion and stasis.  Each one of us is a done deed, and also a possibility, a hope, a disappointment, a promise.

Whether or not I can say how fifty-eight feels, this is how it feels for me.  I feel clear-headed, content, happy, creative, active, at rest and relentlessly curious about life.  I have always been relentlessly curious and I believe that this trait in harmony and sometimes in counterpoint with my spiritual and religious faith have been the guiding forces of my life.  But everything else is secondary and subject to change.

My challenge to each one of you reading this post is that you each look for and find in yourselves that one or those two or three qualities that are constant, that have always defined you for as long as you can remember.  Everything else has been changeable.  Now, look into and deeply examine these defining traits.  How have they developed you to be the person you are today?  How are they going to influence your future development?  Do you like these qualities?  Do they help you and move you forward?  Do they need to be changed, rebranded, or somehow rehabilitated and renewed?
Please leave a comment and tell me what you think.