To continue the conversation at a retirement party (Ah, To Be 25 Again) discussing “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be 25 again”, I asked the person if he really meant it. He said “Yes, especially if I could be 25 years old and know all that I know today.”

It is probable that 25-year- olds today do know as much as their grandparents knew when they were 60. The ease of communication and access to information has grown exponentially. A 25-year- old person today has access to more information in a few minutes than our grandparents had in a several years.

If this is the case for the 25-year- old, it is also true for us who are 50, 62 or 87. We too had greater access to information than our grandparents had.

The critical difference is the ‘living’ that we have acquired. – The experiences with both positive and difficult passages that have taught us what we could never learn in a classroom or on the Internet. These experiences include people we have met, places we have traveled, foods, flavors and aromas that have tickled our senses. They include childbirth, illness, accidents, healing and death. They include love, despair, joy, grief, forgiveness, gratitude, passion, spiritual awareness, empathy and understanding.

Would you choose to give up all that you have lived since age 25 in order to be 25 again ‘knowing’ what you know today? Maybe you would. Or perhaps you are like me, filled with age esteem and loving the experience of living each age and each stage realizing that each day brings a new beginning.

Personally, I would not want to be 25 again and to miss out on these past 44 years of living and learning. It seems to be a poor exchange to trade these years of experiencing life in order to be in a younger body and simply ‘know’ without having gone through the process of living.

What about you? Would you trade the years you have lived since the age of 25?

Bonnie Fatio

Would you like to be age 25 again?

At a retirement party one of the guests explained to me that he would soon turn 60, but was telling everyone that he was 25. He seemed genuinely nostalgic with a desire to relive his 20’s.

Would he really want to be 25 again?

Speaking with people around the world during my travels for AgeEsteem, I have learned that people rarely mean that they would like to be 25 years old again. – It is the associations with the age that they would like. What they miss is what they remember as endless energy, exciting projects on the horizon, and the opportunity to tread on and even blaze new paths.

What they overlook is the fact that we can have much of that at any age. So much of what we seek around us is within us. Instead of wasting time with what we wish we had, we should focus on what we do have, and what we wish for in our lives.

I still have seemingly endless energy when I am doing something that I love, whether it is speaking in a foreign country to a new audience or doing a sun dance in the rain with my granddaughters. Catch yourself doing something that you love and the same will be true. Like me, you will probably also need some down time to compensate for all that energy, but remember how we used to sleep late or take a nap between activities when we were younger? Even in college I used to nap between classes. Times haven’t changed all that much.

Exciting projects can still beacon to us and there are multiple new paths to tread physically, virtually and figuratively. It is up to each of us to realize what we want. In the words of Lou Tice, a great teacher and mentor, “If it is to be it is up to me”.

Would you really want to be 25 again and miss out on all that you have lived, learned and experienced? Or do you enjoy living the NOW with passion and age esteem?

Bonnie Fatio