Irrelevance of Age

I was talking to one of the men I live with a few nights ago and we were talking about the idea of age, specifically looking for a partner of a specific age. There has been more than enough teasing in my life about the age of the men I tend to get involved with. The interesting thing in my life is that I never look for an age when I look for a partner. I look for someone who can match me on many levels. After that, age becomes simply irrelevant.


In the community we foster, age is highly irrelevant. The core members in our community neither look nor act their age. The assistants here come in many ages and many different abilities, but none of them act their age here. Details become so irrelevant here that you often don't know the last name of someone you might work with every single day and you rarely know their age.


Age becomes irrelevant here. We don't pay attention to them unless there is a major birthday. Those only come around every ten or so years and everyone will simply forget until then. It's strange to think that something that it so claimed in society (or lied about) is something that can become so irrelevant.

When we talk about age we will "I am . . " That is a solid way to claim how old we are. It is also a way to define ourselves. When we are younger, age is so important. I have heard more than once (and probably said more than once) "I am five and three quarters!" There is always a desire to be older, to be able to stand up and have your voice count in more ears than just your parents. When you are a teenager, age still matters because it dictates when you can drive, when you can drink (legally) and how much freedom you can generally have. It's not until you reach university that you realize how little many of those things matter. There are students in their first year of study who have returned after another career or raising a family. There are peers who look up to you, although you may be younger than they. There are interesting people who raise good questions that could change your life if you let them and allow them to have relevancy.

While we claim our age for so many years, there can come a time when we wish those years to fly in reverse and give us back the life that we didn't appreciate at the time. That seems to be when we find our age to be more relevant, when we can see it in the wrinkles in our face and the grey hair that has appeared. At least, we think we can see it. There is that beautiful time in between those years, when we accept that age has very little bearing on how we live our lives. There is no magical date when you have to "grow up" and there is not a specific time line for everyone's lives. Age is necessary only when it comes to government forms, and even there it has very little limiting power.

We learn how irrelevant our age is when we stop allowing it to stifle us into a mold we don't desire. When I am at Daybreak, I am one of the youngest assistants. I am not the youngest this year, but I come pretty close. While I'm here though, I am not treated like a 19 year old who has very little idea of what she wants to do with her life. I am both a parent and a child here. I can laugh freely and play, but I also have the responsibilities of a parent. I drive to activities, administer medication, clean the house and make meals. That really isn't even all that happens here, but it cannot be described at all. It can only be lived.

It is when you accept that age has no power to bind you that you can understand how truly irrelevant it is. We can place power in the number of years we have been alive. It's not the years that we have been alive that matter though. It is the years that we have fully lived.