Feeling Your Age.

When you hear someone saying 'I'm 45/55/65 tomorrow, but I dont feel it' what do they really mean. What are you suposed to feel like at a given age and why should we feel that we have to feel like that. Just because you are 55 or 60, as long as you are in good health should you feel that you should have creaking joints and aches and pains and somehow feel uneasy if you dont ?.

Much of the way we view age is a social construct based on the images we recieve through the media and through how we viewd older people when we were growing up. Older people wrere viewed as relitively sexless and heading rapidly for second childhood only a few years ago, and by old you could often count anyone over 50. In my view the endless repeats of 'The Last Of The Summer Wine' have a lot to answer for in perpetuating this image. Now, with the advances in medicine and improved diet people can continue to lead active and fufilled lives into old age and so the concept of feeling, or looking ones age becomes redundant. Perhaps also its time to dump the concepts of people being ' mutton dressed as lamb'. If, for instance, a woman of 45 feels she can carry off dressing younger why should she be condemned automatically for doing so.

On the other hand there are always exceptions, of course and blokes who suddenly decide to cover themselves in tatoos when they hit 40 should really take a step back and ask if this is the best way to express their identity.