The Inconvenient concept of age (Part 2)
Maybe about 10 years ago, I changed my method of remembering how old people are. If someone asks me, "how old is your sister?" I would not try to remember "she is 30 this year" because I found it tedious to have to keep remembering to update and add 1 to my answer from the answer each year. So I just needed to remember which year she was born in, and minus from the current year. But when asked about my own age I would give my actual age and also factor in whether I'd had my birthday yet that year. So, a lot of brain power needed. Now, I have adopted the same method for remembering my own age as I use for remembering other people's ages. I minus my birth year from the current year and just use the same value throughout the year.
I think age is just a number. So what, if I tell you I'm 25 or 30 or 35? It doesn't give any indication of what I've achieved in life, nor of what I have fallen short of achieving. There is no standard. And I recall an ex-colleague of mine who came from China. He was born in 1977, same year as me. But when his parents registered him, they falsely declared that he was born in 1976. So on all his documents he was a year older, started school with the batch before etc. His parents wanted to give him a head-start in life. So if age is something you can lie about, or manipulate for your gain, age is then just a social construct. I recently learnt from another friend that she had been adopted when she was young. Today she does not know how old she actually is, because there are documents like her birth cert or adoption papers which have conflicting information. One shows DOB in year x and one shows it as the year after. But that hasn't stopped her from being successful in her career, being a good friend. I'm not saying it should have presented an obstacle. But the fact that age is so irrelevant to our lives tells me we should just ignore it. I think it is only useful for health reasons; like arbitrarily when you reach 40, please start having regular mammograms.
I think age is just a number. So what, if I tell you I'm 25 or 30 or 35? It doesn't give any indication of what I've achieved in life, nor of what I have fallen short of achieving. There is no standard. And I recall an ex-colleague of mine who came from China. He was born in 1977, same year as me. But when his parents registered him, they falsely declared that he was born in 1976. So on all his documents he was a year older, started school with the batch before etc. His parents wanted to give him a head-start in life. So if age is something you can lie about, or manipulate for your gain, age is then just a social construct. I recently learnt from another friend that she had been adopted when she was young. Today she does not know how old she actually is, because there are documents like her birth cert or adoption papers which have conflicting information. One shows DOB in year x and one shows it as the year after. But that hasn't stopped her from being successful in her career, being a good friend. I'm not saying it should have presented an obstacle. But the fact that age is so irrelevant to our lives tells me we should just ignore it. I think it is only useful for health reasons; like arbitrarily when you reach 40, please start having regular mammograms.