What's our real age?
Just imagine if we never had the concept of age? and lets further imagine that we didn't break our lives into ages? Of course the flip side is we won't able to celebrate birthdays but we can always get around it by celebrating anytime any day? Anyhow this thought came up when one of my nieces and I were chatting and she had gone to a party and someone raised this issue feeling old.
But do think over... do we actually feel old? Doesn't the thought occur only when someone says it? Don't many of us have the feeling of always wanting to be young? There are only two issues to the thought of age - firstly that physically we are not able to do certain things and secondly when society looks askance if an old person gets married to a young person saying "think of your age before marrying, he/she is young enough to be your daughter/son" this again comes out of the multiple barriers/categorisation that we keep putting - which paradoxically comes out of our need to share a community or actually we don't like diversity.
Now the first one is more in the mind - the other day i read about a 94 year old man who ran a full marathon within 3 hours which is tremendous, Peter Drucker continued learning every three years a new subject till 95; it is the question more of what one is trained in and how much the mind is willing to do or not do
the second is of course societal or sociological - which doesnt count at all except to the extent that one wants to follow society's rules
and practically the mind is as young as one wants it to - in fact being old is an asset as one has the experience due to so much exposure and a mind ready to learn which really is a sign of a young person; look at the tremendous capacity of a child; have you ever heard a child say or think old? It is only the body which display age and we human are blinded by physical appearance.
So be as young as you want to be!!
But do think over... do we actually feel old? Doesn't the thought occur only when someone says it? Don't many of us have the feeling of always wanting to be young? There are only two issues to the thought of age - firstly that physically we are not able to do certain things and secondly when society looks askance if an old person gets married to a young person saying "think of your age before marrying, he/she is young enough to be your daughter/son" this again comes out of the multiple barriers/categorisation that we keep putting - which paradoxically comes out of our need to share a community or actually we don't like diversity.
Now the first one is more in the mind - the other day i read about a 94 year old man who ran a full marathon within 3 hours which is tremendous, Peter Drucker continued learning every three years a new subject till 95; it is the question more of what one is trained in and how much the mind is willing to do or not do
the second is of course societal or sociological - which doesnt count at all except to the extent that one wants to follow society's rules
and practically the mind is as young as one wants it to - in fact being old is an asset as one has the experience due to so much exposure and a mind ready to learn which really is a sign of a young person; look at the tremendous capacity of a child; have you ever heard a child say or think old? It is only the body which display age and we human are blinded by physical appearance.
So be as young as you want to be!!
Comments