On the perception of aging in others and self
I hope our perceptions of age become skewed, otherwise I’m going crazy. I’ve found myself seeing people that look exactly like the ones I knew from 30-40 years ago. Only it’s not them. I’ve had to remind myself it can’t be them, because they would look as old as I do if it was them.
Yes, yes, and yes! I experience this on a regular basis, complete with the awareness that it can’t be them. My hunch is that although we are all unique – yes, even identical twins – there nevertheless is a finite number of general “looks” for faces and that’s what we’re seeing – a variation on one of those themes.
In addition, some people change a great deal over time and become nearly unrecognizable. Sometimes it’s about weight gain and/or illness, but often it’s just sag and wrinkle and droopy eyelids. And yet there are others who defy time and look not just younger than the rest of the people their age, but very much like their younger selves with just a few droops here and there. It’s uncanny. I noticed it at my 50th (yes, 50th) high school reunion in particular – the variance in the rate of aging was phenomenal given that we were all roughly the same age.
And the board with the photos of the deceased was getting uncomfortably full.
Then there’s this observation by commenter “AesopFan”:
All of the pictures on our walls are of our family from at least 20 years ago or more, and sometimes when the boys are here, especially the ones I see infrequently, I have to consciously tell myself that all those pudgy, balding, and sometimes bearded old men were my little boys.
That reminds me of my mother’s reaction when my brother started to lose some hair (he’s not bald yet; just receding at a slow pace) and I went gray; she was somewhat dismayed. “Oh, no!” she said. I was a bit miffed, but I realized she was thinking of her own advancing age more than ours. Our appearance was just a reminder of the passage of time.
And then there was my own experience when I had cataract surgery:
A day or two after my cataract surgery I was looking at a relative and noticed he looked older. There were lines in his face I’d never seen before. It was alarming, because at first I thought there had been a sudden and abrupt aging process. But then I realized that it was just that I was seeing more clearly the details I hadn’t seen before, like when HDTV first came out.
Then the same thing happened with my own face in the mirror.
Initially I had figured it was because the surgery had been stressful. Then I thought it was because I wasn’t wearing eye makeup. Then I decided it was the extra-bright lighting in the bathroom that I was using as a guest.
Then I closed my left eye – the one with the new lens in it – and looked at myself in the mirror with my right eye. The lines disappeared, and I looked the way I had thought I looked all these years. Soft focus, lines blurred or erased.
Oh, well. It’s a small price to pay to be able to see better. But a disconcerting one.
I’m used to the sight of my own face in the mirror now. But if I ever want to go back in time, all I have to do is close my left eye, and the lines soften instantly when looking through the cataract in my right eye. A time machine!
From the title, I thought you were going to how we see others aging more than ourselves. I see most people in my age range (mid-60s) as looking older than I think I look, but that’s probably partly an illusion. On the other hand, I happened to see a photo of Caroline Kennedy dissing her cousin RFK Jr. She’s only a couple of years older than I am but looks about 90 (except for having nice Kennedyesque hair).
The vision effect can be worse than loss of resolution with age from cataracts, illness that effects the retina can cause “fun house mirror”
distotions to what you see. My wife has a serious case in one eye and I have milder distortion in one eye. Different diseases that got our retinas. Bad luck in the gene pool lottery.
Neo, it’s nice to know I’m not going crazy!
That instance where my brain kicks in with reality that it can’t be those people from years ago is somewhat similar other situations where we are in a state of conscious unawareness, or unaware consciousness.
My oldest sister has disable the bluetooth in her car, so she can’t use her phone. She’s afraid that her attention while talking on the phone might make her unaware of possible emergency situations on the road.
I know what she is describing. When talking on the phone, I’ll notice that I’ve gone several blocks without being aware of it. I assume that if something happened on the road that required me to take action, I would do that. But should I rely on that assumption? I don’t really know because it’s never happened.
As to how I see myself, when I look in the mirror, I still see myself with blond hair with gray streaks– yet I know from pictures of myself that my hair is completely gray.
“But if I ever want to go back in time, all I have to do is close my left eye, and the lines soften instantly when looking through the cataract in my right eye. A time machine!”
Maybe you could have the ophthalmologist perform surgery to make the left eye the same as your right eye. Presto. No plastic surgery required!
Trabulectometry can give you the “fun house mirror” effect (oops). Not correctable.
Grey? Give me a break. I am White haired. Got it from my Mom’s side of the family. Of course, I am 78 (God, is that Old?). Started going Grey/White in my 30’s. As I get older I see more of my Dad and his Dad in my face. I don’t think I look 78. I do have to say that some are surprised that I am that age, saying I look younger, in my 60’s. Ha! Lines and Wrinkles I have in abundance. Maybe they were saying that to be nice?
A few days ago in the café I was chatting, as he and I do, with a lovely silver-haired prof from UNM. He mentioned in passing that he was born in 1956.
I was born in 1952, i.e. I’m four years older. Yet, when we talk, I feel like I’m in my 20s, addressing an elder.
Well, I never really grew up.
Garrison Keillor on “Prairie Home Companion,” before he became insufferable, did a “Lake Wobegon” monologue on visiting an old high school friend a few decades later and being dismayed how his friend had gained weight and looked so adult and so old.
Keillor remarked that his friend’s 20-ish son looked more like the kind of guy Keillor imagined he would hang out with.
I know my birthdate and I can do the math, but no way am I 72 years-old! 🙂
I mean, I know I am, but that’s not how I think of myself. As Clint Eastwood said and Toby Keith wrote the song:
–Toby Keith, “Don’t Let the Old Man In”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxsNGXoGVok
One of the things I loved about covering the Eye Center the past decade was that the guys would flirt with me. Through their cataracts, I was still young and cute.
(I skipped my 50th Hs reunion last year, so I am not young. And “formerly cute” at best.)
My mother had a harder time with my (her eldest’s) 65th birthday than I did.
“I’ve found myself seeing people that look exactly like the ones I knew from 30-40 years ago.”
If you ever saw Bridgette Fonda on the street you would not have that sensation.
https://everythingfun.fun/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Bridget-Fonda-now-09.jpg
You didn’t get the surgery in both eyes? I thought that was the usual situation with cataracts, with a period of healing time between the two procedures. When I was being driven home after the first eye was done, I did the right eye/left eye thing. With the eye that had been done first, the snow was beautiful and white. With the yet to be done eye, the snow on the ground looked dirty as if it had been along the road for days.
Jimmy, I noticed that about Caroline Kennedy a few years ago! I think she’s a bit younger than I am (yes, I just checked; she’s a year younger), and, though of course I probably see myself differently than others do, she looks 30 years older!
I think it runs in the family, though. None of them seems to age well.
I am eating at a McDonald’s right now. As I was getting my order I saw a man that looked very much how the father of one of my high school friends did years ago. The man has been dead for two or three years now.
I have developed in my mid 50s what my paternal side of the family called “The Lee Flop” where the skin above the eye drops down and rest on the eyelid. Especially on my right eye when I am tired. It can make the older men in my family look somewhat Asian, although our heritage is European and maybe a bit of gypsy.
How people perceive your age is not just your physical appearance, but your demeanor and attitude as well. My wife and I are both in our late 60s, but we both have a lot of energy and are positive and outgoing, which (I think) contributes to people supposing that we’re younger than the calendar says. Also, I started losing my hair when I was in my 30s, and I finally just said “screw it” and began shaving my head. A lot of younger guys around here (Boise, ID) do that, so I suppose that could be a contributing factor.
Isn’t it interesting how our brain will adjust for deficiencies in one eye by priortizing input from the other? I had a temporary condition of tiny bubbles in the retina at the focus point. The bubbles swelled the retina just the tiniest bit, but enough to cause focus problems.
My brain compensated, and the only way to tell was to cover the good eye and see what the problem eye really saw.
gwynmir:
And no one but Caroline in her family of origin got to age much at all. Her father was assassinated at 46, her brother died in a plane crash at 38, and even her mother died at 63 and didn’t look very old. Caroline is now 66.
jrod:
It is indeed usual but in my case it is not recommended at present. Maybe never. I wrote a multi-part series on my eye surgery and the situation with my eyes, but the summary version relevant to having my other eye done is here and also here.
I forgot to mention that about 5 years ago I visited an old friend in NY. I’d seen her in recent years, but hadn’t seen her in perhaps 5 years at the time, so I pretty much knew what she looked like as a woman my age. She looked good for her age, but of course not as she had when we were young.
Her daughter, about 30, answered the door. She looked almost exactly as her mother had at the age of 30; it was uncanny and disorienting and it took me a while to accept the fact that she wasn’t my old friend and that the somewhat older woman in the background was indeed my old friend.
It is not a good thing when you are “interesting” for anything medical.