# Do you ever feel ageless?



## Sonne (Oct 29, 2010)

I've often found that the way I see the world has never fit well with my own generation. I tend to feel as if my views or thoughts are from a couple decades ago but yet my experiences are quite minimal in comparison. Coming from a different country adds to this feeling of not fitting in my own generation within US culture. I feel older and wiser in some respects with none of the experiences to justify this, even at 30+. On the other hand, I can still be surprisingly idealistic considering the world we're living in. 


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So do YOU feel ageless? In what way? *


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## Promethea (Aug 24, 2009)

I feel like a 12 yr old in so many ways. There are just certain things in the adult world that don't really interest me - behaviours, opinions, entire mindsets. I am responsible when it comes to my important obligations - work, etc.. But when it comes to everything else, I just don't think that I go about it with the seriousness of adult, but the capriciousness of a child. I have also always gotten along better with younger people who are less serious, easier to find the humor in things and relax. I'm out of my 20s - but I would much rather go exploring in the woods than go sit in a bar all dressed up, talking smack about other wimminfolk. 

I'm not the least bit naive, but I feel like I have preserved certain levels of innocence and wonder. I don't typically think that the practical need to explain something is the end-all of the experience. The imagination can be much more exciting. 

I don't bother with the games that adults play with each other - for status mostly, or just to feel like they are one-upping the rest of the hens in the pen. I get annoyed when people around me try to include me in it. In gatherings of typical people I have always been the one to wander off on my own and enjoy something unrelated.

I'm silly. I'm immature in many ways - by choice. Adults fucking bore me.


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## Vaka (Feb 26, 2010)

I don't really think my perspectives, ideas, or ways completely fit in with those that are common in my age group, and they probably never will even as I get older, but that doesn't really concern me much.


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## timeless (Mar 20, 2010)

I feel timeless.


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## Proteus (Mar 5, 2010)

..reread this and it made no sense..


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## Sonne (Oct 29, 2010)

tbh, I don't think maturity is that relevant in the long run. I've heard this term used ad nauseum to separate people into different categories, which often implies an us vs. them club; those who are mature and those who are immature. When interacting with differing age groups, there is so much variety in attitude and perspective. How would we even define "maturity"? This term will have differing meanings depending on culture and context. I think in the long run, responsibility and mutual respect matters much more than maturity.


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## Vic (Dec 4, 2010)

It does seem like there's a line that, once crossed, signifies adulthood and a loss of all aspects of immaturity. In my case, pressure to purchase a house, start looking for a wife, etc., because this is what adults do. Yet I have no interest in these things. Property ownership bores me, and the notion of finding a wife just to complete a step in some rite of passage doesn't gel with me either. If I get married it'll be for more than climbing some rung on a maturity ladder.

Plus pretty much all of what Promethea said.


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## Sonne (Oct 29, 2010)

Vic said:


> It does seem like there's a line that, once crossed, signifies adulthood and a loss of all aspects of immaturity. In my case, pressure to purchase a house, start looking for a wife, etc., because this is what adults do. Yet I have no interest in these things. Property ownership bores me, and the notion of finding a wife just to complete a step in some rite of passage doesn't gel with me either. If I get married it'll be for more than climbing some rung on a maturity ladder.
> 
> Plus pretty much all of what Promethea said.



Kinda agree. I'm not really interested in owning something just for the sake of owning it. There must be some larger purpose behind having or owning something besides doing so to fit into the expectations setup today where you earn respect by owning something huge as a sign of your independence. Same with relationships. I've moved away from thinking that relationships can and should be reduced to family and responsibility. I'm not really looking for a "partner" who's a list of accomplishments. I enjoy taking things easy, not rushing and enjoying the moment more so now than earlier in my life. I don't think it's that important to spend so much time and effort acquiring stuff just to catch up and keep up with everyone.


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## Cheveyo (Nov 19, 2010)

timeless said:


> I feel timeless.


Stop it. You'll go blind.


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## The Exception (Oct 26, 2010)

I will always have a childlike sense of wonder.

I enjoy reading childrens books and watching cartoons.

I'm not very experienced in the more adult things like sex. 

I find I get along best either with those way younger or way older than myself.


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## Glenda Gnome Starr (May 12, 2011)

I'm feeling very young right now. Age is irrelevant.
Today, I went out for a walk in the nearby nature preserve, and I saw the leaves on the shrubs and the trees. I saw the new cattails starting to push the old, strawlike cattails out of the way. I saw the river and the geese and the ducks. I touched the new leaves, and I felt their softness in my hands. 
Yesterday, I was working in a garden, digging out the weeds, feeling the tender earth in my hands.
Everything is new. The world feels as if it is reborn and so very young.
I feel that way about myself.


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## topgun31 (Nov 23, 2010)

It's astounding. You swim through the murky, turbulent waters of young adulthood only find that inner child of yours again. On a clear summer night as a toddler, I remember gazing up at the sea of stars in the night sky. I was amazed at the immensity of this sparkling dome above me. I dreamed of leading an adventurous expedition to the stars for the sake of exploration. I began to explore everything around me. I began to ask, "why?" After the roller coaster ride that is young adulthood, after the highs of epic shenanigans and enlightening new experiences, the lows of reverse culture shock - the feelings of debilitating isolation and loneliness, of ennui, through my psychosocial moratorium, I've rediscovered this sense of wonder - and much more. In addition to a sense of wonder, I learned the value of skepticism and empathy. 

That inner child - that natural explorer - will always stay with me. I'll always ask why. And I'm still enveloped in amazement every time I stare at the night sky. So to answer your question, I still feel like a child - with a dash of wisdom instilled in me through experience and an endless quest for truth. With this combination of child-like wonder and wisdom attained through experience, I feel ageless.


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## strawberryLola (Sep 19, 2010)

I feel ageless in a sense that no matter how old I am getting, the younger I feel. 

The more I learn about myself, about life, about new experiences, new people, new things, anything.. I feel like it adds centuries to my internal well. Seriously, if Maro Polo had to find the fountain of youth? What I learned is, it's all from within. Ageless youth oozes inside out.


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## sarek (May 20, 2010)

I am ageless. I am of all times and none.


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

In many regards I seem to be permanently about 24-25 years old, like that's my state of mind...I have no kids, I do not own a house, and I do not have a career or a 401K. People even think that I look younger than I am, when they meet me in person they seem surprised that I would be in my early 30's. 

But in other ways I'm kind of salty and hard like some 45 year old chain smoking coffee drinking woman (note that I do not smoke cigarettes, I'm just trying to conjure up an image that gels with my sometimes harsh, straight-forward, "face reality" kind of talk). 

Then there are parts of me that hover somewhere in the 12-13 year old girl range. Kittehs, yay. 

I also apparently don't feel like I belong properly to either Generation X or Generation Y, lulz.


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## Glenda Gnome Starr (May 12, 2011)

I wonder what ever happened to Generations A through W.
Darn, to do that, I had to sing the alphabet song.
I guess that I really belong to Generation Seuss.:tongue::kitteh::laughing:


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## Nasmoe (Nov 11, 2009)

I'm permenantly 10. I just don't know how to be normal.


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## Glenda Gnome Starr (May 12, 2011)

Normal is boring. Um. That's said from observation. I've never tried normal but I have watched it on TV...



Nasmoe said:


> I'm permenantly 10. I just don't know how to be normal.


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## birthday (Feb 6, 2011)

I'm told that as you age you become a child again. Personally, I've always felt like a child. There's four parts to a person: mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical. 

Mentally I am more mature than my peers.
Spiritually I am lacking.
Emotionally I am also lacking (or rather I tend to be immature).
Physically I am a teen.


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## firedell (Aug 5, 2009)

I felt I have always aged faster than most of my generation. I get along easier with people maybe 5+ years older than me. I wasn't sure if that was, what you were asking for.  I don't feel I am stuck at a certain age, I just feel older than most of the people I know at my age. My mum has always called me an old woman from the age of 6.


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## Swordsman of Mana (Jan 7, 2011)

generally, yes. I tend to talk to anyone over the age of 5 like a peer. some of my relationships will have a subtle adviser/advised aspect to them, but for the most part I treat/relate to people pretty much the same so my age so I feel like my self perceived age is obsolete.


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## sameer6 (Sep 15, 2010)

I don't think about it..


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## Sonne (Oct 29, 2010)

I think I've obsessed over age for so long it's probably time to stop.  I need to let it go, all the perceptions, expectations, worries, or assumptions about what it brings or what it is. Each person experiences their age a little differently, so there is no one sise which fits all.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Yes. Age is one of the most meaningless concepts to me ever and always has been (it never jived with my dominant Ni, "Everything must have some deeper meaning" mentality). It also makes one hell of a weak personal defense (I figured this pattern out from watching too much television, lol). I'm a teenager now, and have been for a long time, but barely ever thought about it aside from scientific aspects and physical observations and as a vague measure of some very bizarre aspects of personal progress occasionally when I just randomly felt like bringing it into the equation for my own entertainment. When I first turned 13, I felt absolutely nothing about it, other than amusement and delight at the insignificance of it, and the fact that some "meaningful" transformation never took place like those that are insinuated in television stereotypes (I've always paid attention to really weird aspects of television - I don't watch television to relax from thinking at all and never have, lol - I pay attention to really weird things on TV that I bet most people wouldn't give a crap about). I felt this way also about getting my period for the 1st time: like I was supposed to feel something significant, but I didn't, and was highly aware than I didn't, and secretly delighted in the revelation of the utter meaningless of the societal stereotypes built around events like this, lol. XD I don't relate to most people my age at all (nor do I even relate to people on an age basis - it's all about personality and intelligence for me, end of story) - in fact, I've never even tried to relate to people based on age (other than if I wanted to do it out of intrigue or for entertainment value, as a source of analysis, etc.), because I don't know how to and never cared to know how to - I don't even think there's a way to for the most part. I've always just analyzed people based on their personality and what I find interesting about them, etc. Treating people a certain way based on their age is just creepy to me in a lot of ways (treating someone weirdly based on an invisible concept). Like, with little kids, it seems fairly normal and expected, but once you're a teenager or 20 something and people start adjusting their attitudes in weird ways around you, whether or not they think that you're "too young" or "too old," then I start getting creeped out (it tells me that people couldn't give a crap about the people they're talking to and are just trying to put on some kind of weird and subversive show with their own intent and purposes in mind). I'm not talking about romantic attitudes, btw, which are a different story. I really don't see much of a difference between most 17 year olds and most...I dunno, early 20s people. Anyone will act immature when they find the chance to. I think intelligence and personality have more bearing on so much that people wishfully want to attribute to age, just because they acted in regretful ways when they were younger and wish some magical cure can come to this in the form of an invisible concept, so they feel that they can avoid actively changing their lives. Based on one scientific article that I read recently, there was interesting evidence that a person's intellect is basically set for life by about age 14, but, of course, a person's brain expands within their set range quite a bit more after this, of course (excluding those who are developmentally arrested). Thinking back on my life then, I generally agree, based on my intellectual performances and whatnot - they reached a certain peak that they hadn't reached before then - my thought reached a level of abstraction that it lacked noticeably the previous year, which aligns with what is expected to happen cognitively in the early teenage years. It has maintained that level of abstraction ever since.


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## Tasnia (Apr 1, 2012)

Sometimes. But most of the time I do feel an age. I work with teenagers in high school. I tend to treat them as partners. I'm 52, but everyone has something to teach. In some ways these teenagers know more than I and in some ways not. We all learn different things as we age. We all have different experiences that teach us different things.

Nevetheless, I don't feel ageless. I have certainly grown and changed. I feel older. Just not old (yet).


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## PerturbedPrufrock (Jan 9, 2012)

In a lot of ways I feel like a 10 year old, from the 19th century, who fell into a vortex and is now trapped in the 21st century. 

Perhaps I should see someone about this.


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## Petar Bachvarov (Apr 5, 2012)

all the time.... so much have been learned , so much have to be experienced... like in a super masive black whole...


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## Dragearen (Feb 2, 2012)

I may still be young in the eyes of society, but I don't feel it. That's not a positive or negative thing, it just is, though I still feel like I'm bragging or something but stating it (I HATE bragging).

I see age as being somewhat similar to personality typing. Both can be used as a guideline to establish a basic understanding of what kind of person they may be. But if you take it too far, you're only limiting, objectifying and categorizing them. Age adds an extra level, by being a gauge with which you can measure someone's general life experience, but even that has its limits. It's true, younger people typically have less experience. It's unfair to expect that a 12 year old will understand college, or working a 9-5 job. But that doesn't mean that older people are necessarily more wise, or smarter, or more capable in life. It just means they have more experience. How they interpret that experience is very important.

One can have little experience, and yet interpret it in a way as to learn much from it, much more than their years would suggest. Another can have much experience, and yet learn only a little from it. So I think you "real age" has more to do with how much wisdom you can pull from your experience, rather than the experience itself. On a deeper level, of course. On a practical level, again, that 12 year old isn't going to understand 9-5 jobs quite as well as someone who's 40. That just makes sense.

I'm 14. Many people cannot look past that and expect me to be just some kid. I have to say, some of the people I respect most highly in life are the people who can look past my age and see what, if anything, I have to offer. I have always associated with people older than me much easier than people my own age (though this isn't always the case. That would be a double standard. In this case I'm talking about the general 14 year old), and especially adults.

So do I feel ageless? Absolutely. Do I feel out of place in American culture, society, and being a high schooler? Again, absolutely (I was just talking about this a couple days ago with a friend of mine, actually...). Do I know anything else? Unfortunately, no.


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## Agent Blackout (Mar 1, 2012)

Silt said:


> I've often found that the way I see the world has never fit well with my own generation. I tend to feel as if my views or thoughts are from a couple decades ago but yet my experiences are quite minimal in comparison. Coming from a different country adds to this feeling of not fitting in my own generation within US culture. I feel older and wiser in some respects with none of the experiences to justify this, even at 30+. On the other hand, I can still be surprisingly idealistic considering the world we're living in.
> 
> 
> *
> So do YOU feel ageless? In what way? *


I quite often get mistaken for much older than I actually am. I can only speculate why, but I'd imagine it has something to do with the "illusion of wisdom" from being able to see the bigger pictures.
Exactly like you mentioned, I feel older than my age but I also don't think I have enough experience with life to back up this feeling.

I've noticed that my behavior (but not my attitudes) tends to automatically adjust according to situations and especially around people. I just tend to end up mirroring whoever I'm around, regardless of age (but of course, with obvious limitations). In this way, I don't really feel like I have a "mental age" (if that makes sense).


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## amatsuki (Apr 17, 2012)

In many ways I think i've matured in terms of what I think about over the years, but it feels like time stopped when I was six. Though I think i've grown more reserved, I still enjoy the things I did then, and think the same things are stupid. I still feel like the population isn't quite up to my standard, that I love people, but people are mostly stupid. 

Turning 18, going to clubs, driving, romantic relationships, parties - they all feel surreal. Like it wasn't meant to occur, that I'm not ready. It's only really troubling in the way that I want my independence like I did as a child, and yet I feel it's something that is not within my grasp. Similarly, romance is something I want but still feel uncomfortable with in practice.


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## Persephone (Nov 14, 2009)

I'm a bit of an anachronism. I write with fountain pens, and prefer not to use the computer if possible. I'm a big advocate of putting technology in its place- that is, as _tools_, not as _crutches_, and certainly not to use it to fulfill what can be easily achieved by ourselves. Whatever happened to _walking_ to the grocery store instead of lazing around, dazed at the TV, engorging Cheetos, and having groceries delivered to your door! For this reason I am against over-reliance on calculators in math education, and the reliance on Facebook for social connection (since social networking changes so often), or recording personal matters on computers, because this form of record-keeping is so fragile. Catullus's poetry survived for two thousand years to reach us, yet it's chilling to think that nothing I write today (attributable to the cheap, perishable writing material and the proliferation of e-writing) will last even for the next decade.

I'm also an advocate of the traditional, lecture-and-book based education, without flashy gadgets or "group work" or "a laptop for every child" or any bullshit like that. The teachers' role in the classroom is to _teach_, not _facilitate_. The teacher ought to play a pedagogical and authoritative role in the classroom instead of merely an umpire of discussion. The teacher should not concede ignorance to a student if the student is plainly wrong. He should be told that he is _wrong_, yet inherent in this system is the fundamental shift in our attitude towards authority. Authority is not to be trusted, and a fellow Gen-Y'er openly said that "teachers like it when you argue with them" when it's clear that he's wrong most of the time and the only purpose of his argument is to be self-righteous and insolent. 

There's currently a cultural craze to QUESTION EVERYTHING, and the mindless self-styled intellectuals who follow this creed are the worst of them all. They're so smug because they "question everything". As always, people don't know moderation, and to paraphrase C. S. Lewis: "to see through everything is to see nothing at all, because everything is transparent." As a corollary, the subjectivity of every position under the sun is emphasized, and we'd sooner all hold hands and sing kumbaya than admit anybody is wrong at all, and nothing is absolute, nothing is certain, and nothing is sacred. We've all turned into yes-men wusses who think it's wrong to stand up for our own beliefs, if it meant causing butthurt.

People have been lamenting the decline of the arts for centuries, yet in no era is this more true. Monstrosities such as the "music" of Lady Gaga are hailed as "revolutionary", such soulless noise, and the generation raised on the aphrodisiac of "self esteem" perpetuates her exhibitionism because this is the age of shoving yourself in people's faces, a gross distortion of "expressing yourself". In art, the attention-whoring is just as apparent. Look at the recently popular artists such as Damien Hirst, or popular novelists such as Stephenie Meyer. I have no use for the post-modern "culture" of our time. I don't really feel ageless, as much as never fitting into any time period.


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## Cetanu (Jan 20, 2012)

Most of the time I feel ageless.

I don't feel ageless when I identify with my external self. I feel like a child when I do that.


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