I’ve been acquainted with the existence of Lil Nas X. I had heard the song Old Town Road a couple times when it came out and then recently got sucked into Tik Tok and have been coming across his videos more often where I heard the song Call Me In The Morning. Last night he entered my dreams.
The dream was a college campus/park setting. I was sitting on a park bench outside across from Lil Nas X with three other classmates that I don’t recognize while conscious. They were studying philosophy. We joked together for a while before he turned back to me and asked “does my image fit the definition old?” I can’t remember the actual way he phrased the question but the concept is the same. In the end I woke myself up because I was thinking too much about all of the meaning behind that question. Why that question had to come from Lil Nas X, I’ll never know.
So, here are my thoughts on being old.
Being old is such a subjective topic. Every person has a different definition of old in reference to both themselves and others which changes as they get older as well. I look at myself and sometimes think I’m old, and then when I compare myself to other people I begin to think maybe not. Is that the key? You are simultaneously young and old until you’ve been compared?
Do you have wrinkles? How many years have you lived? Do you have a lot of life experience? Have you seen or gone through something that changed you? Do you feel old? You get to make the judgement about your own youthfulness, and there’s a 50/50 chance that judgement will match the next person’s judgement of you. You could be 88 and know that you’re older in years than most people you will meet, but still feel quite young. You could be 65 just starting to receive the benefits of being old, and feel like you’ve deserved the senior treatment for far longer. You could be 50 and realize that you’ve probably lived more than half of your life already. You could be 45 and watching your first born going off to college while also watching the grey settle in your hair for good, but to your mother you still have the boundless energy of a youth she no longer feels. You could be 25 and finally old enough to rent a car without all the extra fees, but you also just finished a degree and you’re so exhausted from the work it took that you feel much older. You could be 15 thinking about not much of anything in terms of your life ahead, but knowing you’re much older inside than your parents see you as. You could be 8 and not think you’re anything but young, because you’re 8.
I feel old when I meet someone still in school. I feel old when I do my own taxes. I feel young when I buy something new but soon realize I don’t feel responsible enough to be using it properly. I feel old when I see scooters or rollerblades or bikes left out in a driveway, the kids having forgotten to put them away or maybe they’ll come back to them after lunch. I feel both young and old when I discover a new passion as I immerse myself with veterans on the subject and feeling that seemingly endless excitement to keep progressing. I feel young when I hear the stories of a stranger. I feel old when I forget how old I am. I feel young when I remember I’m 24.
The interesting part is that there seem to be two definitions of old in relation to people. There is the ever changing definition based on feelings and then there is the definition that almost exclusively includes wrinkles. When you look up the definition of old, (which I did out of curiosity and not because I think definitions are all encompassing or even hold up to time most often) it simply says having lived for a long time; no longer young. I couldn’t say why, but to me those are two very different definitions in the same sentence. Maybe it’s just the subjective nature of the whole concept again. Either way, the betrayal of a person’s age is wrinkles, and a person’s age determines their “oldness.”
So, Lil Nas X, you are part of a Schrodinger’s paradox of aging. You are both young and old, and that judgement is forever changing based on circumstance. However, I see no sign of wrinkles, so I’d say you do not fit the image of “old.”
