It's My Worst Fear

I'm 26, going on 27. For the past few years, I have been terrified of getting older. Not adult responsibilities (heck, I welcome those), but changing appearance, diminishing health, and, worst of all, not being able to be who I used to be. The biggest thing that scares me about aging is that we can't go back to who we were. I'd like to see myself at 70 if it meant I would be getting younger after that point. It's kind of like eating. If you're hungry, you eat, and you're not hungry anymore. But aging is linear. You keep getting hungrier and hungrier until you eventually starve. That scares me! Every year that passes by tells me my life is one year shorter, and life is far too short as it is! Of course I don't want to die young either. One big reason I don't want to age is because I want to live a really long life with the people I love.



I too am sad about not being able to return to who we once were. It's something that has always saddened me. I remember being a kid thinking "soon I'm going to be an adult, and I'll never be a kid again". Sometimes it would make me cry. Of course, I'm glad to be fully grown now, but I don't want to age if it means I can't look like I am now ever again.



Lately, what scares me the most about aging isn't the health changes. I'm optimistic most of that will be fixed in the next few decades. It's actually the social situation that bothers me the most. Changing appearance means that I'm, arguably, looking worse. It also means I can't fit in with the general, younger crowd. I'm too different! I would not mind aging nearly as much if I knew I would have control over my appearance.



I think that if an older and younger person date, the reason some people see it as strange is because of the physical age difference. Some say life experience and mental maturity, but people's brains don't change much after 25. I think most of the stigma is the way people look, like the younger person "can't get someone their own age" and the older person is "trying to get something they shouldn't have". It's too bad, too, especially when two people love each other. I really think if people stopped aging at a certain point, like 30, then chronological age wouldn't be a factor in dating.



Any career sport is largely contingent on age. You'll likely only be able to perform well at most sports in your youth. With dance, it's also likely that a career could end on an injury. Hopefully what I'm about to say next might be of some comfort.



People have always been searching for a way to control the aging process. I always took comfort in the idea, as a kid, that we might some day find a way, and that will save me. If not, at least we might be able to regrow organs, or create new bodies for us to transfer into, or something. However, modern science seems to have a bit of an edge on this. I was ebullient when I heard that Harvard reversed the aging process in mice. Regardless, there are a lot of factors in the study I can get into that state that this arguably worked under certain conditions, but the fact remains that it happened. Recent research also shows why we age, and many companies are working to find telomere inhibitors to control the ways cells age. (Tip: Googling "telomere" might make you feel better.) I am confident that we can find a fix for this in the near future, but these research scientists don't get government funding. Their research isn't published too widely.



One thing I do to take comfort in aging is try to push for a cure to aging. What I'm doing is trying to spread the word about what the scientists do, help wherever I can, donate my time and services to these research institutions, and hopefully this will be something that's available for us before it's too late. I think that if everyone does just a little bit to help and show their support, we will have an answer to the aging problem in no time.



There are some people who say that they're comfortable with aging and death, and say that it's natural. I admire their contentment, but I don't follow it. Shoes aren't natural and we use them. Neither are medicines, or cures to diseases, and prosthetics, but life is better because we have them. I think those who are comfortable say they are because they've accepted it as an 'inevitability'. But it's not inevitable as long as we push this science. :) Hey, I'm a man of science, and I have faith that we can take care of this problem, especially since it plagues everyone. We can all relate to it personally.



There's so much that I love about life, and I want to experience it for as long as I can, in a body that's young.



I hope my words have brought some comfort. You are not alone. :)

You have yr life ahead of you. You are a dancer so get a second career thought out because dancers have short careers. I still remember Margo Fonteyn who made her career last an d last. Time passes very quickly. Life is short. Dont waste it. Plan an d make it work for you It is yr life.