Remember how in the 1930s, people payed $.10 for a good cup of coffee, but we don't think twice about spending many times that now a days for the same thing? That is called inflation, and and has been a side effect of our goring economy. Now just as people earn more now, (causing prices to rise) people are also living longer. People are spending more time in school in their youths, they are waiting longer to have kids, and are are being active later and later in life. It used to be that making it to the retirement age of 55 was a tough haul, but now companies are having to force people out at age 65 or even 70.
But the emotional significance of age has remained the same. We still think that a woman who is unmarried and childless at age 30 is a sad thing- and yet new advnaces in fertillity mean women are perfectly able to have children later in life. We think of 45 as middle age, and we think of 60 as "old" And yet our generation may turn out to have an average life expectancy of 110 or 120. Why is it that we are defining almost 1/2 of your potential lifespan as 'old'? Old should be the last little bit of your life where you sit around and tell stories, and yell at the TV...
So, assuming that people are living 25% longer these days, but when talking about ages, we act like nothings changed, we should be able to adjust for this inflationthis is my solution: its called the point eight solution. What you do is multiply your age by .8, and the result is your social age- it is the adjusted age that you should use when trying to make judgements about how you feel about your life.
For example, a 30 year old who is single, and childless should use their social age of 24 when thinking about their life. A person having a mid life crisis at age 45 should relax, since their adjusted age is in fact only 36. And someone who is approaching the age of 65 should remember that in terms of society, they are actually only 52.
Give it a try, and see if you think it "feels right" your age in years is simply a measurement of how many times the earth had gone around the sun since you were born- don't think of this as lying about your age- but simply adjusting for inflation. ^_^
