Age Is a Number. Youth Is a Mindset

Young and old are relative terms. A 55 year-old in a retirement community is young, and a 8 year-old in first grade is old. Certainly there are young parents who had a kid in their teens or early 20’s, and there are old parents who, medically speaking, have “geriatric pregnancies.” Which, if you don’t know, when you give birth at 35 or older. Yep, according to science, 35 is geriatric. We had our kids just before that cut off. My wife and I were both 2 months away from turning 35 when our youngest was born. So I am scientifically a young dad. Or at least that is how I see myself.

I am pretty bad at being able to gauge how old somebody is by looking at them. Looking around at the other parents at school events, I really can’t say if I’m one of the older or younger parents. If I had to guess, I’d say I was probably slightly older than the median. But again, I am a terrible judge of how old somebody is, including myself. For the most part, I feel young. Which is great, right? But I wonder, is it better to have a youthful view of yourself, or a realistic one?

Let me frame that a little more. When it comes to how I physically feel, I fully agree that feeling young is far superior to feeling your age. Outside of some random exercise induced pains that come and go, I physically feel the same as I have for the last 20 years – if not better. I exercise with more intention rather than just throwing some weights around, and a I certainly eat better. I don’t know if younger me would be proud or disappointed that my Taco Bell intake is now dwarfed by my quinoa intake, but I think he’d be pleased that all his old pants still fit. But how you physically feel is just one part, the other is how you mentally feel, and I fend myself torn on the benefits of a younger mindset.

In my mind, I am young. I firmly believe that different parts of our brain get frozen in their development at various points in time. For me, my sense of humor largely stopped developing when I was 14. Have I come to appreciate a clever turn of phrase? Sure. Can I count to 70 without stopping to giggle? Absolutely not. And it is to the point where my kids are now judging me like I am some kind of monster for laughing when somebody falls down or gets hit in the face and/or crotch with something. I don’t know what to say, what was funny to 14 year-old me is funny to 41 year-old me. The part of my brain that that controls my humor saw Austin Powers when it came out and was like “ya know what, I’m good here. The rest of you brain cells go on. I’ll keep impulse control here with me to keep me company for a while just in case.”

But I also think your core sense of self gets solidified at a certain point in your development, and that is how you see yourself. Certainly what you see your self as changes and develops over time – you see yourself as a spouse, a parent, etc. The identifying characteristics of these roles get layered on top, but the foundation of who you see yourself as is established at some point already. How I see myself as husband had evolved over time, how I see myself as father is changing as what my kids need from me changes, but how I see myself as myself hasn’t changed. I don’t know if I can put a number to it, but I certainly don’t see myself as somebody in their 40’s.

I had an interesting moment where this occurred to me. I went to a business lunch event hosted by the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, so the room has a lot of business owners, executives, and generally people with C’s and O’s in their job titles. My name tag said “Guest”, and it felt like it. As I walked into the room looking for a table to sit at, I scanned for two things; a seat that faced the stage so it wouldn’t have to turn around while the speaker as talking, and a table with people I thought I’d fit in with. If the table already had an old guy in a suit sitting at it, clearly that wasn’t a place for me. I scanned the room and found a mostly empty table that had three younger people at it and a chair facing the stage, perfect. I sat down and started to make the usual awkward intro and small talk. I noticed their name tags said “Grand Rapids Community College”, which is where my wife works, so I asked them what they do there. They replied that they were actually still in high school but were taking a dual enrollment class. Well, good thing us young people are sitting at the same table then.

In a room full of business owners, executives, civic leaders, and a former Governor, my brain saw myself as being a more natural fit with people who haven’t been able to vote yet. I mean, high school students bright enough to be taking college courses and wanting to come to an event to hear a presidential historian speak, but youths none the less. When I looked for people “like me”, my brain found people like a version of me that it froze in time, but clearly not the version of me that exists externally. The next person that came and sat our our table was an “older” woman. As we chatted I learned that she did in fact have an important job title at a major company in town. I also learned that our kids were the same age. Clearly, she must have had a very geriatric pregnancy. Or maybe she got too old to have kids and adopted. Otherwise, how could this older person and myself be in roughly the same stage of life?

I feel young, which is great. I play with my kids, we go on walks and runs, and I can still pick them up. So far there hasn’t been anything my kids have asked me to do that I physically can’t. But the body and mind are connected though not the same. I wonder where the line is between having a youthful exuberance and a youthful mindset. If I don’t see myself in the place in life I currently am, will I be able to truly thrive in the place? As my kids get older and have more mature needs, will I be able to be the person they need me to be in that time and place? How to keep feeling younger and keep thinking older? I’m not sure, though I suppose at least being self-aware enough of the issue is a step in the right direction. Maybe the next time I’m at a business lunch I’ll sit next to the old guy in a suit. I’ll ask him how young he feels.