If You Could Be Any Age, What Would Your Age Be?

 

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” - Satchel Paige

 

That’s a quote that been on my mind, even days after I first saw it. It keeps coming back to the fore and setting me off down memory lane.

When I first saw the quote I quickly travelled down the years and found I couldn’t freeze on an age. But the fact that I couldn’t was somewhat perplexing. Most people when asked this question would have a time and age when they were most happy, a time and age they would like to live in forever.

So why then could I not find an age. It’s not like I’ve lived a fairy tale life with no troubles and trauma. Actually looking back, there had been a lot of that.

Toddlerhood had seen me abused, school life had been lonely, college was when I lost my father, work life had been boring, married life is challenging… Every decade has something sorrowful that stands out like sore thumb but that isn’t why I can’t choose an age.

For each of those sorrowful incidents there have been many happy moments. I’m not making a list here for it is lengthy, I’m going to let my saying there are tons suffice. In every decade I had fun, I enjoyed life (though it didn’t always seem so at that time). I’ve had my fair share of not so fine moments but I can’t remember a time when there were only fine moments.

So if I had to choose an age it would be ‘now’. The current me, my life right now.

But that isn’t entirely what that quote is about, is it. Another interpretation would reference the number-game for me. Of thinking beyond the binds of civilisation and invention. Of seeing the world beyond how it's been defined for our boxed-in vision, the world as we know it.

Age after all is just a number, an invention of the guys who developed numerals, the ones who decided how many seconds made a minute, how many days made a month, how many years made a decade,...

Numbers are just that - an invention - a figment of some guys imagination. And he could have imagined it all different, you know. What if in all their inventing, they had made 5=35? Then, I’d be 5 years old today. And maybe that's my true age. :D

It doesn’t end there though, coz there’s one more thought I have about the quote and this one involves memory loss. If I lost my memory with no one who knows me around, how old would I think I was. A look at my hair would place me closer to 50 and my skin and body would maybe be early thirties. But my heart, my heart would belong in the twenties, that time when I was all about self-discovery. [Not that I’m not now :D ]

So, how old are you? What's your true age? And what’s your interpretation of the quote? ;)