Heart and Mind

Aging Physically

You know, with all these "thymenage" things... What I find funny about so many of these kind of my blog entries is how they are not quite the same as each other, but not entirely different, either. All the musings on aging, even more specifically, come from different places and different angles, but they ultimately are close sisters to each other. Nothing wrong with going back to the classics (and the namesake of this blog's url line). Here are some more thoughts on the subject, in particular, the physical aspects of the big age game.

Aging physically is such a weird trip.

Whenever my father sees a video that he's in, he jokes, "Who's the old guy?"

It is kind of odd to see images of ourselves, and were often taken aback and think to ourselves, "Man, I look old." Perhaps my father thinks he looks really old. For people in my age bracket, though, I don't think it's so much that we think we look elderly, but the image we see sometimes doesn't match our expectations, which are based on a) what we feel like and b) what we used to know ourselves to look like.

What makes us look older? Lines of the face? Paunchier builds? Greying and/or chainging hairlines? An increasing distance between what we look like stylistically from how younger people present themselves? It's all of these things and more.

The thing is, I've mostly (though admittedly not totally) accepted that I'm aging and looking older with each passing year. So thinking that I look old doesn't usually catch me as much by surprise as you may think. But you know what does? Seeing how old some other people look who are approximately my age. Let me explain...

I'll turn 35 in less than a month. So sometimes I'll meet someone who I think looks kind of like what I thought my Dad looked like when I was growing up—some middle aged dude. I don't know how old this person is or even how old I think he is—mostly because I don't think about it at all. But he definitelys look like the stereotype of "someone's dad." And then I usually find out they are approximately my age.

It's often like that, too, when I first see someone whose age I did know before I met them. For instance, maybe I'll know the wife, who I know to be 42 or something, but not her husband. So, I'll assume the husband is about roughly the same age as the wife, and yet when I meet him, I'll realize that the guy I've been picturing in the stories I've heard looks like he's maybe 27 or 28, which is not at all what the real guy looks like. I don't know why, but they usually look older than I pictured them to look.

Now, mind you, they usually don't look bad. They look fine. Saying someone looks "old" has such a derrogatory ring to it, but it really doesn't have to and it shouldn't mean anything bad. I, personally, don't think that people who look like they're 40 tend to look "bad" or decrepid or unhealthy, as a general rule. I think they look normal, even though there are attributes about their physical appearance that tell you that they're not 22.

In short, they look fine, but they (using a male example here) just look "like someone's dad." Which is often what they are. And it's what I am. So it makes total sense.

I guess that's the crux of what makes it all so weird: the ultimate recognition that we are turning into our parents and that we are really embodying the characteristics of being middle-aged that we pictured when we were younger and thought of middle-aged people.

posted by Steve @ 11:14 PM