Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

This is just kind of a fun read, not anything too serious, if that is OK. It has to do with how we deal with the discrepancy between our aging body and how it looks, you know, who or what that is looking back at us in the mirror each morning and the fact that inside that old body we feel much younger than we are. How is that possible?

As a young person I certainly always thought that as I aged physically I would also age psychologically and spiritually, but there seems to be general agreement that most old folks still feel young inside their aging bodies. I know I do.

I have written about this phenomenon for many years and that writing is scattered around here and there. But just how young do I feel? I don't feel like a kid inside, more like a young adult. Not only do I feel young inside, I believe that I can tell you exactly the day (and probably the time) as to just how old I am here inside of me. And that would be exactly 25 years, 133 days, and 20.5 hours (or so) old. I won't tell you what that date is, but you can figure it out if you are that interested. Let's just say that I am 25 years old in there.

Now, we can argue or at least speculate what happened when I was 25 years old for my internal clock to just stop like that. If you ask me, I will tell you that I believe some essential part of me just stopped aging at that point. Actually I wouldn't be so polite about it; I would just say that some essential part of me "died" back then or at least stopped growing older, but that might involve us in a whole other discussion, and I kind of want to follow this one out for a while.

Be that as it may, inside this 73-year old body is a very active 25-year old carrying on as usual, as I have been for some 48 or so years! And I might ask you to look inside yourself and tell me how old are you inside? At what age did you stop aging in there?

And I am talking to old folks here. How old are you inside? If your actual physical age right now is 25, don't bother telling me; just consider yourself lucky.

Over the years I have asked many people this same question and I have gotten many different answers and the age of 25 was not one of them, so apparently people cross over this major threshold at different ages. However, no one yet has told me they are older than their physical age or even 'as' old as their physical age, although I am sure one of you reading this might be about to do so, and I will be skeptical about that too.

Why this phenomenon is not generally commented on, I have no idea. I would think that this sort of observation is not only easy to come by, but interesting to boot. Just take a look yourself inside and evaluate how old you feel and you may be able to determine (as I did) what year you made the transition or whatever we want to call it, "crossing over?"

As I mentioned earlier, we might want to have a full discussion as to where, why, and when such an event could take place. Does some inner cord suddenly snap and we are cut free from our body and float gently out of the body into where? That would be one view, and probably the one I subscribe to. Or do we not only live, but also die at what folks call the "Prime of Life" or somewhere around there? Does no one grow older that the peak of our prime, the tip of the top of life? Do we give up the ghost and cross over some subtle (or not so subtle) threshold back around then?

I don't know the answers to those questions, but I have my own opinion of course, which I volunteered above. Yet I would think that some of you reading this might actually be moved to scrutinize your own life enough to have an opinion too. What do you think about this idea? For example, if you are 66 years old, do you feel 66 years old inside, and don't tell me that on some days you do. That doesn't count. Generally how old is the "you" in there and, if you know, what happened that year? And now for the fun part, the avatars.

There is a case to be made, and I am not saying that I am making it here, but I am kind of just pointing at it, that after a certain age we tend to create an avatar based on who we were back then when we were young, at some age when we were, pardon the phrase, "ripe."

When looking in the mirror sends back a blank stare and a "Who is that old thing?" there probably is a point when we prefer to refer to ourselves as who we have been rather than who we physically are just now. I don't quite do that yet, but I do consider how I appeared back in the day as a significant part of who I consider I am today. Old people do this. Go figure.

It's not just pure vanity, but of course there is some of that too. My inside "me" at 25 years of age wants to be associated with the physical me that it once was. It is a simple matter of fairness, but what do I know, and which "me" is talking right now? Is this the 73-year old or the 25-years old speaking? I would say it is a very well-ripened (not over-ripe, mind you) 25-year old who now is as an older person more confident in the nature of his mind.

People have always said that they feel young inside, but the suggestion was that we are somehow "ageless" in there, and that makes a lot of sense to me. After all, what is age aside from the physical parabola? I might rephrase my original question as: at what physical year in our life do we become ageless? For me it seems that whatever we want to call this phenomenon, it clicks in around the peak of our physical and psychological majority, what we call the prime of life.

At least for me, I am not younger than, and as mentioned, I have no idea what it would be like to be older than 25 years old because I have not gone beyond that. And other folks that I have asked tell me that the age they feel is more or less than 25 years old. Perhaps the best definition, as mentioned, is at what age do we become ageless in there?

And now for this whole avatar thing that comes up in video games and other places, where some graphic form or another represents us? I always thought that our personality or Self was our personal avatar, something we have cobbled together to, as Shakespeare said, "to sum my count, and make my old excuse," and perhaps it is. But perhaps we older people also tend to use a photo of us when we were in our prime as an avatar, as well. In some way, how we appeared like way back then in the day becomes part of who we are,

And yes, I do on occasion send out a photo of my avatar for consideration. Here is a rough pencil-style sketch of that 25-year-old me. How about sharing your own avatar here? And that would be the avatar when you were at your prime, not one of what you see in the mirror today.

And those of you who are still young, well, you are still your avatar! What you see is what you get.