Day 350- Ageism

As I was reading my nephews blog, I really put a lot of thought into something he said. In his post he said "Yes, today is my birthday. Woot! Not that it matters, I mean really, age doesn't mean anything. It's not like I woke up today and felt older or different in any way".

You are how you feel, I guess. I think to be put into a category based on your age can be pointless at times. Sometimes people that are older than me act younger than their age and people younger than me act older. Age is just a number. I like who I am and if I were to put a number on my age I would definitely say I feel like I am in my upper 30's. Which is good; I like my 30's. So at the moment I actually feel like my real age, but I know I have felt differently and acted differently than my actual age at various times in my life.

As a young adult I felt like I moved on to a different stage in my life when I turned 25. Even though I was technically a young adult I didn't feel like a young adult anymore. I was married, had a full time job and I guess I had different priorities in my life. I think my husband has a different take on age. I always make fun of him because he'll say something about how old he is getting and I will gently remind him that he said the same thing when he turned 25. He also said the same thing when he turned 30, 35 and finally when he turned 40. I think I'll finally agree with him when he hits 80.

It makes you think about  ageism. You have all of these people that are put into these different categories. You have the youth, teenagers, young adult, middle aged, elderly and everything in between. There are all of these stereotypes based on age, but as I said before some people act older and some people act younger than their age. Even though my nephew just turned 15 I think he is wise beyond his years.

So I will make an effort to look at who a person is and not form opinions of them based on their age. And I will not think of age as a number, which is probably a good thing since I am quickly approaching 40, but I will base it on how I feel. It's not like I will wake up and suddenly feel differently.