Aging and Identity... With the Best of Intentions

Around our house, we usually call the aging process "olding." We're olding. We're not getting old yet, we're just olding.

Consequently, we're often talking about "olding gracefully..." whatever that means.

Of course, it's often not quite as graceful as we'd like to think, as various aching body parts let us know that we are definitely mid-60s, and not 29!

Then I think back to my childhood and remember the way 65 was really old back then... my mother's father shuffled along with a cane, when he was 65, and could only have dreamed of a reality in which aging means we only work six hours in the garden — instead of ten — before we declare ourselves too tired to continue.

I guess it's all relative.

For the most part, I don't feel older and I don't really recognize the person in the mirror as myself... although I have never really recognized myself as me in the mirror, even when I was a kid.

"Identity" was always a bit of a mystery, to me. And I certainly don't identify as old.

Truth be known, I have never really identified as ANYthing.

I mean, I know that I have a name that I need to put down on government forms and such, and there are checkboxes here and there to "identify" me as "male" and "white" and a few other things.

But classifications are a different thing from identity, as far as I am concerned.

I realize that a lot of people in this world spend much of their lives in search of some kind of identity, but when I search the dark and deep corners inside myself, I always come up with pretty much the same answer: The entire question of identity never really mattered very much, to me.

I suppose I could claim that I identify as a writer, but that's not really what I am; it's what I do.

I never really thought about dilemmas surrounding "identity" till it came up during a personal development and nonduality retreat I went to, in the early 00's, where the workshop leader was trying to teach attendees to let go of their ego identities... and I discovered — without ever having been previously taught anything — that I really didn't identify, except as a means to relate to other people.

For their benefit and comfort, not for mine.

Perhaps this strange attitude is related to my "relationship" to life's "boxes."

People tend to try to put others — and themselves — into identifying boxes, which is a convenient way of classifying someone, without really taking the time to know the person.

Consider that if I say that my friend Bill "is a lawyer," in most people's mind there will be an immediate set of identifying assumptions about Bill, because we have preconceived notions about "lawyers."

If I instead said that Bill — the very same person — was an artist, people would conjure up a whole different set of identifying assumptions about Bill.

Neither set will create any sort of accurate depiction of Bill, in reality. To actually know Bill, you would have to sit and talk to him and get to understand him through your lens of perception. Sadly, it's not something many people do, or are comfortable doing.

But I think we — mostly — have good intentions.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

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Created at 2025.05.19 23:55 PDT
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