Can We Talk About Aging?

But not in the way you might think.

Photo by Gabby Orcutt for Unsplash

I’m a 48-year-old woman in Southern California and I’m fascinated by aging, but not the gray hair and wrinkles aging.

Rather, I am absolutely astounded at the ways in which my perception of a numerical age is so vastly different from my experience of the numerical age.

Quite simply, 48 doesn’t feel how I thought 48 would feel.

I’m too young to have kids in college, right?

I teach at a nearby community college. This past week, during a conversation about musical tastes, a student shared the year her father was born relating it to the music he enjoys.

1982.

This student. This college student has a dad who is ten years younger than me! How is that possible when I feel so…so…youthful? And parents with college-age kids are, you know, old? (Sorry Shelley and Kim. I’m making a point here.)

Therein lies the tension.

48 isn’t what I thought it would feel like. In my younger years, a parent with kids in college conjured visions of sophistication and an aura of self-knowledge that said, my work is done. I have arrived.

I pictured a sedan and sweater sets not…not…well, not what I feel like right now.

I think part of my incredulity is that I haven’t “arrived” yet. This is an illusion I am clinging to for dear life, even as I am gently, but persistently, trying to loosen my grip on this fantasy — the idea being that at a certain age I will be finished. I will be complete.

I will have done my internal work and can then settle into living life free from all the self-crap that bogs me down.

I know. It’s cute.

I feel 15. I don’t feel 15.

Some of it is the feeling, the nebulous-hard-to-describe feeling, that the texture and experience of this age are just so different than I expected. Some of this is my personality. I’m just so damn effervescently youthful. (I actually thought that I would age out of this part of myself. I’m so glad I haven’t.)

And here is an additional layer. I might not feel 48 but I don’t feel 15 or 25 either. I am enjoying some of my perspectives and insights that only develop after living for 48 years; the wisdom that can come with this chapter in life.

Then again, sometimes I feel young. Like 15 or 25.

I love contradictions.

When I was a college student myself, I worked as an RA (resident assistant) in the dorms. My fellow RAs and I were supervised by our RD (resident director), a thoughtful woman who was both a boss and a mentor.

Judy shared the RD apartment on the first floor with her husband and college-age son. And she was old. Like 45. (Sorry Judy. Again, making a point here.)

In one of our many conversations, I remember her commenting that she still felt 15. This was enhanced by the fact that she had known her husband since her teen years so it helped keep the youthful feeling alive.

I, at 19, was fascinated by her declaration. How in the world can she still feel 15? What does that even…feel like?

I have carried that conversation with me for nearly 30 years now and I’m getting closer and closer to understanding. I think I get it.

Sure, there are pretty regular things that have accompanied my aging, i.e. gray hair and wrinkles. But other things have surprised me.

I have kept my childlike delight in swimming in the ocean. I still have a great need to play loud music and sing at the top of my lungs when I’m in my car like I did in high school. I continue to wrestle with self-consciousness about my body, also like I did in high school. My heart enjoys romance and romantic connection, like in high school…again. (High school can be such a central chapter in one’s life.)

There is wisdom in listening to my aging elders.

One interesting byproduct of being so amazed at what aging feels like is that I am looking at the generations ahead of me, listening more closely to the stories behind the stories they share; stories that touch on what it feels like in the next seasons and chapters. I’m hearing hints of very similar things that I’m experiencing right now. There is still romance and childlike delighting.

This is wildly encouraging.

Although this body will continue to do its thing with increasing creaks and cracks, my spirit can have an entirely different, perhaps freer, experience to do things like dance around the living room singing into a microphone when no one is home…

Or even, when they are.

That is one great thing I’m noticing about aging. I still feel (oh, dear God, I’m going to type it) “young at heart,” but I care just a little less about who sees me dancing or swimming or singing.

And that is a wonderful thing.