"You are only as old as you feel" How much of that is true?

I just watched the Twilight Zone episode "Kick the Can" and its message about the person being as old as they feel but I wonder how much of the episode is actually true? How much of 'you are only as old as you feel' true?

Fixed the thread title (it was "youa re" before).

Thanks.

If that was true, I'm 46, despite being only almost 26. Army aged me in dog years.

Depends.

There is no fooling the biological aspect; if your body is old, well, you really are damn old.

However, there is a key difference between being old and being exhausted or lacking in drive. What some young people like myself feel as being the former can actually be the latter. Of course, when you really are old, you are more likely to feel tired too.

Some people are physically young, but be passionless and fatigued, while some people physically old, but very passionate about life and energetic.

Be careful with that: a lot of conditions have fatigue as a major component. And, you can get them at any age: youth doesn't stop e.g. fibromyalgia or diabetes sucking.

Not sure. Between young and old, which is the under-informed, dangerously naive, scatter-witted one? As a person with a lot of years, I can't really tell.

@dRoy and Euodiachloris

Those are some good points but I also wonder if phrase always thee mental rather than the physical?

I feel more like a teenager now than I did when I was a teenager, and I'm in my 30s. ...granted, I've always been reeeeeeeeally slow when it came to anything but book learning and video games. This definitely applies to feeling my age.

I feel so very, very young.

I wonder how much of this is because I live with my mom, who's 76.

edited 8th Dec '15 8:26:38 PM by Bur

I'm 25, and I feel 58 most days. I somehow managed to become a crotchety, old beer-swilling jackass before my first gray hair. Then I went out and bought a hickory cane, to bash annoying children with. Damn, it feels good to be old. Now GIT OFF MAH LAWN!

My thinking lies as "Age is determined by the amount of time that has passed since one's birth, in terms of mammals".

Personally speaking, I have never felt as if I was any age. When I was younger, I always yearned to be heard and spoken to on the same level as "the adults". Going from 10 to 11... to 12... to 17... the only thing that the number of my age had brought me was mutual respect and higher maturity in my thinking. Though I look at pictures and see my physical age, though I look at past creations and see my mental age, I've never felt any different from then until now. The only thing that I ever defined as me was the voice in my head. The voice in my head that never changes. The voice in my head is me. Perhaps in the future I'll come to start feeling something, but as of now, I only feel how I am different from the past. I feel no time in my bones.

Though the classification of age as time is a very literal and basic path of logic, it is the one that I live. Anybody else sort of feel this way?

Can't say I do. Not only is my mental and emotional process completely different over a decade ago never mind earlier then that. My "inner self" has changed a lot from my younger days as well.

edited 1st May '16 7:00:48 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I'm definitely of the belief that it's not the years, it's the mileage.

I can get behind that. I'm 35 and I feel every day of it. Twice, at least. In my head, right now, I'm like a little old dude on top of a mountain with a beard you could abseil down on.

Even I get a little bit sceptical of myself when I think about all the stuff I've done, like I've got a poorly-written Expansion Pack Past, but really I just had better time management and a lot more energy when I was young.

edited 5th Sep '16 2:02:43 PM by InverurieJones

Going by mileage. I was due for an oil change around 10 years ago at 25.

edited 10th Sep '16 4:23:06 PM by TuefelHundenIV

When I was eleven, everything went horrible. I suddenly felt like my head was full of badly packed cotton wool, my emotions would go from sometimes just not being there or would suddenly demand my full attention, my ability to concentrate shifted to random mode and my memory and personality mask became dependent on external cues combined with how full my internal battery was, my sense of time passing warped and my body got so uncomfortable, slow, heavy and achy with dizzy-sick and tingles on top simply from just moving across the room, I often just wanted to curl up and forget it was mine, never mind the weird sensitivity to light, temperature, pressure, scent and noise that still suddenly happens at random. Tinnitus became a new normal: my ever-present personal Christmas beetles (a form of king cricket). None of that has gone, although people kept telling me any weirdness I reported was "just a phase: you'll get used to it". Nope: nobody gets used to dizzy-sick with an option on gastritis, fibromyalgia, or full-neck-and-skull headaches (which will it be!).

I can even tell you the month everything went wonky: mid-December to early-January 1986 — we went to Krueger National Park and it was a good holiday, despite the horrible. I stopped being a kid and started being Totally ConFuSed, but nobody took it seriously because I was still kid-shaped. I learned that nobody would believe, however much I said I was fatigued (kids don't know real tired and you don't have a temperature: you're not sick).

Aging has meant my energy pool has become a bit smaller and my resilience against most of the symptoms isn't as good, but I have more practice and can describe what's going on (not that many still take me seriously). Getting older has no scary things: the major change happened ages ago and I hit a weirdness normal. It's just more stuff on top of the pile of symptoms: no biggie. *shrugs*

Things get bad, but it's not the end of the world, as you can still enjoy something within the horrible.

edited 11th Sep '16 9:15:08 AM by Euodiachloris

As soon as I hit my mid thirties, I may meet you guys in terms of energy.

You might. Or, you might not. My example is not standard (most people with chronic fatigue syndrome/ myalgic encephalomyelitis don't come down with it as kids, or have it last 30 years on a rise-dip deep-plateau-rise-dip pattern).

Turning 40 has almost been a relief: suddenly, me not having energy isn't looked at as totally weird anymore. Nothing's actually changed significantly, just the perceptions of others accept my reality a bit more. :/ Heck, talking to those of my age group worried about the menapause is almost funny (seriously: how hard can it be versus getting an almost autistic-like attack in the middle of a job interview with free-ranging anxiety on top and getting stuck in bed for a week afterwards alternatively nauseous, cramped and getting dehydrated and very hungry because walking to get water or food was nigh on impossible for as much as a day at a time, yet nobody paying attention to the problem because only people on drugs get like that at 22?).

At 60, it should be even easier, whatever other problems I stack on top. <_<

edited 11th Sep '16 6:21:55 PM by Euodiachloris

I avoided smoking , alcohol (I do have the occasional wine with sugar as I hate the bitter taste) and drugs so I think I might be safe in that regard. I do however have special fondness for junk food or pastries but as soon as I hit middle age, my stomach, heart and bowels will betray me and I will not able to eat them anymore. I better them while they last because I will never enjoy them again,

edited 19th Oct '16 3:56:34 AM by GAP

I felt a lot older when I was 18 versus now. But then the life I'm living is a lot different now.

There are definitely certain experiences that feel like they pile on years really quickly and often all at once.

At about 23 I had a serious oh shit moment where I found myself staring down the sites of my rifle on guard duty at drunk USMC captain reaching for a gun because he didn't want to take no as an answer for armory access. I have rarely been so shit scared in my life. I felt positively ancient for about a month afterwards.

I'm lowkey annoyed that the cashier at the grocery store yesterday called me "Miss" instead of "Ma'am." I am not a "Miss."

I am 35 years old. While I certainly don't feel older than that (unless I forget my estrogen and have hot flashes because hysterectomy, LOL), I don't want to be younger than that, either. Each year of age is something I've fought for and won, and as I get older, that'll just be more and more true.

edited 25th Mar '17 10:02:47 PM by RaspyMink

Raspy: Same age as you though there are days where I was closer to 25. Those days hurt less and my injuries when I was in the Marines had only just started to really catch up to me.