Last Saturday, I went birdwatching, poked the rose bushes, visited a garden centre and then listened to a podcast while my husband batchcooked. “Ha ha, I am so old,” I texted a friend, recounting this. That “ha ha” meant: “Look at my young-fogeyish affectation; see how old beyond my years I act.” But after sending it, I realised that no “ha ha” was necessary: all these activities are wholly age-appropriate, indeed bog standard, for a 48-year-old.
I didn’t think I felt younger than my chronological age, a phenomenon known as “subjective age”, explored in the Atlantic recently. It related how a study of 1,470 Danes revealed that people over 40 consistently feel about 20% younger than their actual age, while people under 25 feel older than they are. The prevalent, fairly basic theory posits that the over-40s are in denial about ageing; the journalist suggested it could be an optimistic expression of how much living we feel we still have to do.
Surely it is also about the way older people are still represented? A much shared and derided graphic of fitness plans for older women from last year comes to mind, in which all age categories were drawn inappropriately elderly (albeit in a stylish, Iris Apfel way). The “45-50” lady seemed to have had a shampoo and set circa 1962 and carried a walking stick; the “over 65” caricature is stooped and clutching a cat. If that’s what we’re told our age looks like, it’s not surprising it doesn’t tally with how we feel.
I have always felt subjectively old, and months into apparently endless insomnia, I feel like that 400-year-old Greenland shark that was alive during (though presumably not aware of) the Great Fire of London: a slow, poisonous-fleshed, barnacle-coated relic. My front-facing phone camera, turned on in error, corroborates. But now I have to assimilate the realisation that some part of me thinks I’m too young to appreciate some distant curlews, a satisfying pruning session or a garden-centre cafe scone. I’m wrong on both counts: lacking self-knowledge is a skill I have consistently mastered at all ages, real and subjective.
