27 Notes on Growing Old(er)
Age is a strange thing to happen to a little boy.
One reason that the experience of growing old can feel jagged and abrupt is that there is a disconnect between how old we feel and how old we are. You often hear people say “inside I still feel young.” It’s tempting to dismiss that as meaningless happy talk but actually it’s often true, and it’s one of the strangest things about growing older. Neuroscientists use the term “proprioception” to describe a person’s intuitive sense of their own body in space—the position of their arms, the movement of their legs. If it deteriorates, you can’t control your actions without conscious effort. I think there’s a kind of proprioception for age, which for some mysterious evolutionary reason gets switched off around age 40. When you’re 18, you feel 18, when you’re 35 you feel 35, and when you’re 53 you feel… 35. You’re constantly having to arbitrate between your felt age and your real age, reminding yourself that you’re not actually that person anymore, making a special effort to act appropriately (maybe you shouldn’t actually go skiing, or drink six pints, certainly not both). If you’re a young person, and you’re talking to an older person, it’s wise to remember that they may well believe, at some level, that they’re the same age as you. Many such conversations are asymmetrical: the young person always aware of the age gap, the older person not so much.