Birthdays and Age

How old would you be if you did not know how old you were? Silly question? Maybe not as silly as it sounds. Why would one feel down and depressed as one approaches one birthday, or after one has turned 40 for 50 when a few weeks before and after they are just fine? If we had no calendars and did not know when our birthday was supposed to be would it bother us that we are older?

Sure we are older. Everyone gets older all the time. But we don't seem to focus on it on a daily basis. Which is certainly a good thing, since we would all be tied up in knots all the time if we did. Instead we worry about the price of gasoline, or property taxes, or the pain in our back, or our children who are struggling in the jobs or whatever currently occupies our thinking at any given time. We may feel our age when we can't leap tall buildings in a single bound, or climb the stairs two steps at a time, but that has nothing to do with a date on the calendar. It has to do with our physical condition and the state of our health.

On the lower part of the scale, we know that children mature at different rates, and that turning five or six does not automatically mean that a child is ready to start school. I say that we know that, although I am aware that you can't say that to a parent of a young child. By the same token it used to be that 21 was the magical age when a person became an adult. Yet we know of 30 year-olds who are not able to make it on their own and remain dependent on the their parents. And while that magic age was 21 for a long time, in recent years 18 became the age of majority.

Even though there is a correspondence between age and maturity, relationship between them is not an absolute. And even though the calendar gives us an approximation of what a person's physical, and sometimes mental and emotional maturity, might be, it is not an absolute measure. I read in the newspapers of men and women who can do physical activities at 90 or more than I am dare not even consider. In which case the calendar gives me a false sense of my age or youthfulness, at least compared to those folk.

I believe that a large part of our concern about age has to do with our mortality. The older we get the closer we are to the grave. No one lives forever, at least not so far. Obviously we care about our physical appearance, but that is because we think if we can appear to be younger we can somehow trick others and ourselves into thinking we are actually younger, and, by extension, have longer to live. Of course, in our society, we think of women as being the ones who are hung up on looks. Yet there are as many products for men to make themselves look and feel younger as there are for women, from clothing, to cosmetics, to styling, to media.

Freud would point out that all of that has to do with being sexually attractive, which I admit it is. But that is not unrelated to mortality and immortality. Remaining a youthful and sexually attractive body has to do with being sexually functional and productive, or should we say reproductive. And although we have managed to separate sexual fuction from reproduction in our society, we are able to make the dissociation absolute. Reproduction, or more exactly the ability to reproduce, has to do with youthfulness, whereas when we have lost our reproductive capacity we are older and therefore nearer the grave.

Of course, all of this would be true whether we had calendars and knew our chronological ages or not. Our bodies age, our functions diminish, we die. But the calendar adds a continual reminder at regular intervals. Of course, as time passes, we begin to look forward to birthdays as a matter of accomplishment. So when someone older asks me my age and I tell them, "O, your're just a kid!" they would tell me. Their greater age is now something of which they are proud. Each new birthday means that we have survived another year. Second childhood? In a sense, yes. Children look forward to birthdays because it is a celebration of themselves. As we get older a birthday should be something to which we look forward with even greater pride and joy. By George, we're still alive!

So, how old would you be if you did not know how old you were? Obviously, in one sense, you would be no older than the calendar says you are. But the concern and depression increases with our feeling that we are not as attractive, not as desirable, not as alive as when the calendar said we had fewer years. If it is any consolation, no one is getting younger by the calendar. But, even more consolation, we can keep young in our mind, in our attitudes, in our relationships, and if we are lucky, and if we take care of ourselves, yes, in our bodies, too.