A lot of people feel younger than their chronological age. I was interested in this Atlantic article suggesting average people (over the age of forty) feel 20% younger than their actual age. This is not from asking people “How old do you feel physically?”, but the altogether different question: “How old are you in your head?”.
But “How old do you feel?” is an altogether different question from “How old are you in your head?” The most inspired paper I read about subjective age, from 2006, asked this of its 1,470 participants—in a Danish population… and what the two authors discovered is that adults over 40 perceive themselves to be, on average, about 20 percent younger than their actual age… “We ran this thing, and the data were gorgeous,” says David C. Rubin (75 in real life, 60 in his head), one of the paper’s authors and a psychology and neuroscience professor at Duke University. “It was just all these beautiful, smooth curves.”
“I’m 35,” wrote my friend Richard Primus, 53 in real life and a constitutional-law professor at the University of Michigan Law School. “I think it’s because that’s the age I was when my major life questions/statuses reached the resolutions/conditions in which they’ve since remained.” So: kind of like my answer, but more optimistically rendered. He continued: “Medieval Christian theologians asked the intriguing question ‘How old are people in heaven?’ The dominant answer: 33. Partly bc age of Jesus at crucifixion. But I think partly bc it feels like a kind of peak for the combined vigor-maturity index.”
I was just discussing this with a co-worker - we’re both in our 50’s, but our my mental images of ourselves is indeed closer to when we were in our 30’s. As that article mentioned it can be quite a shock when I actually look in a mirror . I do find it a particularly weird bit of self-delusion.
I’ve felt 40 for awhile. I just turned 45. Everyone assumes I’m mid-30s or so. I know this isn’t about looks, but I’m still constantly amazed when I realize I’m older than actors, athletes, singers, and other entertainers were when they seemed much older. I don’t really feel much younger or have any reason to, 40 is fine.
My body has had some pretty hard road miles put on it. I feel every minute of my age on my body. Mentally I’m mid-30s.
Society has changed how age is felt. Rather recently I was watching an old episode of Dragnet. In it Friday asked to speak to a possible witness. He was told, “My mother is elderly, this will be hard on her. She’s over 60 years old.” In the not so distant past once you were in your 50s you were old and acted it. In your 60s you might as well be Methuselah.
I’m 55, and it’s surreal for me. Because I always thought 55 was “old,” and I don’t feel old. For better or worse I still think and act like I was in my 20s.
I’m 62. Said this on the lift today to a younger man (40+): “Snowboarding makes me feel my age, not snowboarding makes me feel old.”
I still think I can fight like I did in my 20’s. Glad I haven’t needed to test that theory out.
Dunno lost my hair and what’s left has been grey for a long time. I don’t feel 62, but dang I get to purchases my 62 and over ski pass for next season as my first senior discount. Fuck me. I certainly feel like I’m at least a decade or two away from a senior discount.
I don’t even know! I feel like me, whatever age that is.
We’ve been doing a lot of confronting mortality around the household in the past couple of years, so that may make me feel older than I used to. I’m coming up on 62, and sometimes I forget I’m not still in my 50’s, though.
Around others, I see myself in my mid-40’s. By myself, I think I’m 10*. I’m physically 63.
*10 is the perfect age. The opposite sex is neither ewwww or wow! Becoming a teen is years away. And the only worry is when is the weekend and summer is coming!
71 and feel 50 at most. Might be because I’m the same weight I was then and still have all my hair, and I can still walk a long way without getting tired. But I matured fairly late also (some might say I haven’t made it yet) so that probably helps.
Mentally, I feel like I’m in my 30s, like probably, mid-30s. Physically, I feel like I’m in my mid- to late-40s. When talking to my fellow adults who are in positions of authority (executive directors, doctors, police, lawyers), I feel like I’m in my late-teens to early-20s, like I have to say the exact right thing and be on my best behavior.
I’m 48, and ftr, I’m actually an executive director of a non-profit. Still feel like a stupid kid when I’m around some people.
This is me exactly. Last time I had a physical, I received an email that my blood test results were in. I go to check it out, yep, that’s my name, same weight and height as when I was in college. Fine so far. The next line said 57 years old. I laughed and told my wife they got my age wrong, I’m 55! She looked at me and said, nope, you’re 57, just getting senile. Then she patted me on the head. I think she may have been muttering something about an old coat as she left the room. Not sure what that was about.
. I do find it a particularly weird bit of self-delusion.