I turned 32 last week. Here's why I don't feel like it.
Age might really be just a number.
Since my 30th birthday,
Everyone’s always asked me a question on my birthday that they never asked me in the first 29 years of my life:
How does it feel?
To which I always respond, “not much different.”
It’s a peculiar question, one that always makes me feel like the answer that someone was rhetorically expecting was, “older.”
Which then, maybe conspiratorially, makes me think that everyone in society expects that 30-and-beyond-year olds are supposed to “feel their age” harder than the younger crowd.
Poke around on the internet and you’re sure to find enough light-hearted (and some dark) memes that perpetuate this idea of inevitable, crippling aging:
You’d think that the millennial generation, who is increasingly scared of being like their parents, would be better at not perpetuating such a silly stereotype.
Why The Stereotype Lives On (And How To Stop It)
The reason I don’t feel older isn’t just because I choose not to.
That’s a massive part of it, though, and one that nobody should discount at the turn of every year. Mentally, I feel 25 for a few reasons:
Time compression from COVID
It was when I felt like I hit “peak” physical shape (or one of my peaks)
I chose, in that moment, not to settle for that being the peak, and to try and elongate that feeling through movement as much as possible
In continuing to move my body in a variety of ways and with open-mindedness to all ways, I don’t feel i’m lacking any mobility, strength, or endurance
Now I could caveat this all by saying things like:
I work in a profession that demands movement and exercise almost every day
I haven’t suffered any major injuries or inhibitions to my health
“Looking the part” is part of my sales pitch, so I’m highly incentivized to be active
But why would I do that? Many personal trainers forget what it’s like to move themselves and let themselves go.
Many such people my age have gone through the last decade without a serious injury, yet complain of aches and pains in their 30s.
The recipe to not feeling like a bag of **** as you age is more than just movement and harm reduction.
It’s taking a proactive approach to managing your autonomic nervous system by planning your leisure strategically, not getting caught up in doom-scrollademics after your work day, and having a structure in your day that prioritizes YOU, not a temporary career or some mundane task.
I’ve written about all these things before (hyperlinked above), because before this newsletter was an all-around wellness newsletter, it was heavily focused on mental health.
One of the largest pillars of not aging mentally — and truly, not letting time itself slip away before feeling the dreaded “where have the past five years gone?” — is making sure your mental bandwidth is not so overloaded with the boat load of digital and social information thrown at us daily that we can’t self-regulate.
Think of the last time you had some time to sit down with your own thoughts, phone not nearby.
Can you even pinpoint that time?
If not, you’re not seriously detached enough from the hustle and bustle of life. Keeping your allostatic load — your overall stress intake — low involves setting a boundary against overwhelm.
That includes things that to us younger folk seem benign: social media, text messages, scheduling plans, and the like.
Stillness and appreciating the moment — I won’t say or suggest meditation, since I don’t practice seriously enough — allows for some grounding and understanding of where you’re at in time.
It’s in that stillness, be it morning or night, where you can decide your gym schedule, decide what to say yes and no to, decide your meals, and figure out all of the big-rocks components of actual physical fitness.
When you don’t have this, life decides these things for you. Which means even the desire to do all those things is compressed into small, inefficient windows where those desires take a back seat to “priorities.”
The other part of not feeling old is more experiential than mental, but does require a level of mental fortitude to seek out.
New experiences — particular ones that challenge you — are a hallmark of preserving youth and the feeling of it.
Think back to what you remember of childhood.
At one point, everything you experienced was new.
It was this chemical rush of serotonin to your brain — the newness of every single experience — that helped make your youth so rich and colorful.
The first time you peddled a two-wheel bike with no training wheels.
Your first high-school sporting event.
The first kiss.
The failed audition or flop on stage.
Good or bad, these experiences painted in you a color-coded canvas of knowledge, understanding, and iteration that shaped who you are and have become.
At a certain point, society and the work-industrial complex would have us forget this newness and lock ourselves in — mentally, physically, spiritually — to a career.
“Peak earning years,” they call it.
The financial fulfillment, the down-payment on the house, the kids should be enough newness for you.
But in this generation, it isn’t.
The economy doesn’t allow us the freedom it allowed our predecessors.
Whats more painful is that we recognize this, and many of us are abstaining from that “next step” — kids, the house, the 16 hour days — because the same light at the end of the tunnel isn’t there for us. It’s much bleaker, and we need more experiences.
And yet, despite criticism from the older generation that we “don’t work hard enough” or “aren’t pacing like our parents,” enough of us are collapsing under the weight of that feeling that we can’t simultaneously experience new things and progress in life that we revert to the mean.
Well, that feeling isn’t true.
Sure, there will be periods in our mid-adult years where it’ll be a grind.
Where work doesn’t stop.
Where the need to save money is more important than the need to book a flight.
But those periods can’t (and shouldn’t) last forever. A line has to be drawn when enough is enough.
The moment your mind is craving a change, it’s important to act on it — whether that’s requesting the PTO, starting the business, or simply logging off a few minutes early.
One thing we do have control over is our agency. Feeling powerless is common these days, but in my view, power over yourself is reclaiming your time.
And I don’t think pillar number two — finding broad, new experiences — happens without a dedicated focus on number one — finding time to yourself, without distraction.
Age may truly just be a number if we can use those two vehicles to build a life, both physically and mentally, that feels satisfying.
But sitting in stillness and deciding how new that satisfying experience should feel are the penultimate stepping stones to building the ageless life you want.
Until next time.