My Reflections On Age

I turned 16 a couple of months ago, and while going through the painstaking process of updating my age on every website I have a presence on, I had one major realisation - I take a lot of pride in my age.

In my own eyes, my achievements are less impressive as a 16 year old than as a 15 year old. Not to say that I haven’t achieved anything between my 15th and 16th birthday, but sometimes I question whether my additional achievements in this one year span can compensate for the disadvantage being one year older brings.

Think of it as an XY-plot where the Y axis represents my achievements, in my own eyes (while there is no clear indicator of impressiveness or achievements, I am assuming it on a scale of 1 to 100 from my own eyes) and the X axis is time.

At each of my birthdays, I think of the slope of this graph (the slope is equal to the change in achievements divided by the change in time, ie one year) - if what I’ve managed to achieve over the course of this one year is extremely impressive, then the slope of the graph is steeper (m >> 1) than what it would be if I hadn’t achieved much.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about if age is a defining factor for me. On one hand, the fact that I’m 16, a “kid”, is the reason why quite a lot of people have not taken me seriously, but on the other hand, for those who value my achievements, the fact that I’m 16, a “kid” is something which makes what I’ve achieved even more impressive.

In fact, the majority of teenagers I’ve met on LinkedIn, Twitter and in professional settings have quite explicitly stated their age in their bio/ headline and this is something which I find rather interesting. What I’ve noticed is that until the age of ~18, most teenagers wear their age as a badge of pride but the second they cross 18, it just somehow disappears from all profiles as if they’re afraid people will comment on how it took them this long to achieve all that.

On the other hand, someone I met, used to do freelance web design when he was 15 and would appear to be 24 just so that his age wouldn’t drag him down.

And so, every birthday, I would open my profiles, and with a sigh append my age feeling that my profile is less impressive than before.

I wish I could offer a solution for those who view it in this way (myself included) but the aim of this blog is just to document a question which I’ve been grappling with for a while… All I can say to myself and you is that at the end of the day, view your personality in it’s absolute terms and not use age as a factor…