I’ve said it before. At the risk of repeating myself, I’m saying it again. I’m not planning on getting old before my time. I’m fighting old age the best that I can, kicking and screaming, and striving to be FEISTY (not just ‘feisty’). That doesn’t make it easier, but maybe it’s half the battle for fighting age inflation.

“Age inflation’ doesn’t really need explanation, does it?

What surprised me was the reaction of my eye doctor when I told her I am Purple-3 rather than 53. She laughed, but the expression on her face clearly said that I must have lost my mind. She actually came out and suggested that I must be crazy. She thinks 50 will be a wonderful age.

“I have a few years on you,” I told her. I didn’t tell her that I’m trying to find someone to teach me yoga. “We’ll see what you think when you hit 50…er, Purple.”

There was that look again. She laughed and said she thought it would be a great time in her life—and she looks forward to it. But I’m NOT crazy. It’s another way of saying that age is a state of mind, not a number.

I didn’t argue with her. I didn’t bother saying those things. She’s never going to understand what I’m talking about until she arrives. I’m noticing that kind of thing more often these days. Wisdom comes with age, my mother always has advised. Um…I’m not sure I like the implications of that. Or maybe I can design my own implications. After all, what is FEISTY?

One of the main characters in a Christian fantasy story I wrote—not sure an elderly woman can be the heroine in this particular story—is feisty. Check that. She’s FEISTY. Yeah. Periodically I take out that manuscript and work on more revisions. That very story flashed into my mind over the wisdom-comes-with-age concept. Easter is nearly as old as time. Perhaps she’s wisdom itself. And she doesn’t care about numbers OR colors. She lives each day to the fullest, confident that she has an awful lot more to offer her world. She loves and has compassion for others and carries her friends’ burdens as well as her own because, well, that’s just what she does. That was something she was taught to do when she was growing up, just like her parents did before her.

Maybe it’s not so much about being a number or a color. Maybe it’s just about living, wherever we are in our lives, whatever year or age, just being who we are at a moment.