Here is how I managed to confound people in my 'circle of life', some cannot handle it, some love it, and some are trying to emulate how I view and live my life...
1- You are going to make three lists: A, B, and C.
2- List A will contain all the things you do in life. Obviously, a single male will have a different list A than a married male.
3- List B will come from list A. List B will contain all the things that you will 'act your age'.
4- List C will come from list A. List C will contain all the things that you will act half your age.
For example, my ideology and politics will reflect my 56 yrs, but when am on my bike, I will act like am in my mid 20s. Believe it, I have never gotten a speeding ticket on my bike. I just know how to read traffic and be precise with the throttle. If you like fishing, why do you need to 'act your age' when you go fishing? Any man here will act half his age at the beach will all those nearly nekkid women out there.
People continually underestimate my calendar age by at least 10 yrs. The youngest estimate -- despite me pointing out my grey hairs -- was mid 30s. How you behave
IMMENSELY affects how people estimate your age. Grey hairs and wrinkles only make it more difficult, not easier. I have the former but not (yet) the latter. I have a desk job but I work out 5 days a week in my little home gym. I do not need to suck in my gut. My waist is 29 in and I do have a hard time buying pants, so I buy 30 then run the pants thru the hot wash and dryer a couple times to shrink it. I watch what I eat but am not fanatical about it. I have no problems with two double cheese burgers from Five Guys at one sitting. Fact -- Spider-Man likes Five Guys, Hawkeye prefers In-and-Out. Look it up. I wear progressive glasses but my eyesight have been stable for past five yrs, that make me a good candidate for lasik, which will make it harder for people to estimate my age.
Having people consistently underestimate your calendar age affects you psychologically as well -- make
YOU feel good about yourself. You smile often, walk straighter, and basically gives less and less f*cks on what the hell is going on with other people on what they do and say. Women who underestimated my age then found out am nearly as old as their fathers looks at me differently in a good way -- my G/F said so. I guess women notices such things among themselves. My G/F is nine yrs younger than me and she underestimated my age when we first met.
The point here is that -- If B is longer than C, then you may need to 'lighten' up a bit. If C is longer than B, then you may need to 'grow up' a bit. So the goal is to balance out B and C. As you get older, you will add to A -- the master list -- then you will have to reassess on what thing(s) belongs to which list.
Age is a number and a useful one. Whatever the context of 'act your age' based from whatever cultural impressions, why do you need to 'act' that way all the time for everything? I go crazy with my five yrs old niece and three yrs old nephew. They do not want me and their father to act our age.
@James Jaevid @jhungary @Nilgiri @Hamartia Antidote
No doubt.
Whenever I said the US is the best country on Earth, people seems to think I have never been anywhere else. I think people believe that more out of their needs to sneer at Americans at any chance they get than out of any objective assessment about the US and Americans in general. The US do not need to be perfect but just better and we do not need to be better at everything. I have been to other 'first world' countries and sure, they do have some things they executes better than US. Medical and health care issues -- we could use their inputs. But when all the nitty-gritty details are added up and averaged out, the US is better than everywhere else.
