Do you remember that Beyoncé concert in which she sang
Love on Top
dedicating it to something that “grew inside her”?
Well, it was in 2011, and that being that was gestating in the womb of the singer with the euphoric applause of her father, Jay-Z, is already bidding at auctions: Blue Ivy Carter, the first daughter of this couple of artists, launched during a gala the offer of 81,000 euros to get diamond earrings designed by Lorraine Schwartz that had belonged to his mother.
At the age of 10, she became the star of the night and left a question in the air for those who still don't realize how fast time flies: Am I so old that I remember her birth as if it were yesterday?
Time, malleable despite its supposed rigor, has the diabolical habit of playing tricks: sometimes, without wanting it, it stagnates like a windmill and other times, when we least want it, it speeds up like a slope without brake.
It is not necessary to resort to classical philosophers or after-dinner platitudes to make the spark jump.
Or don't we often wonder if it's been so long in conversations about feats that we imagined to be recent or when we see news like that of the daughter of the American superstar, who already has two children over five years old?
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We guess eternal, but the calendars are mercilessly changing numbers.
Sometimes that belief is related to circumstances.
Youth, for example, has stretched in Western societies and has given rise to terms such as the
thirty
-teenager or adolescent beyond 20. The concept does not respond to exact limits, and depends on many factors.
The United Nations Organization (UN) stipulated that this phase comprises from 10 to 24 years of age.
The National Institute of Statistics (INE) usually carries out studies in which it is framed between 15 and 29. And each generation has a different notion, tending to consider the previous one older.
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When you look at one of those photographs that were taken in schools or institutes to celebrate the end of high school in the fifties or sixties of the last century, you will see that these boys and girls, no more than 17 years old, look like adults of 30. And if you walk through Benidorm one day you will see people over 60 or 70 wearing shorts, colored T-shirts and even a baseball cap like the one worn by their grandchildren.
"Today, the concept of old or elderly has an increasingly marked stigma and nobody wants to be one," comments José Miguel Fernández Dols, professor of Psychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Fernández Dols attributes this denial to how “fatal” it sounds to say old.
“There are gay, trans collectives… but there isn't really an old collective.
What is most similar would be that of pensioners, a euphemistic denomination so as not to allude to the taboo term ”, he indicates.
For the Royal Academy of Language, notes this professor, being young is being immature, full of energy and being in the early days of something.
That used to end when family or work obligations began.
Something that does not happen now: the age that was previously considered optimal to procreate, sign a mortgage or settle in a job is, at this time, an uncertain path, full of precariousness and the desire to continue with a carefree party.
"The indeterminacy regarding the categories of young and old, however, is growing as we know more about our
hardware
and our
software
," explains the psychologist.
“At eight years old we are already too old to effortlessly learn the phonetics of a language if we have not been exposed to it.
In our early thirties our bodies begin to decline physically.
Dying at 60, in a rich country, is dying too young and some of the most important countries and organizations in the world are led by people who are over 70 ″, he adds, citing Putin, Biden or Pope Francis.
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For Pilar Guerra Escudero, clinical psychologist, everything depends on the self-concept we have of our body image, our "inner being" or what we project.
That public or personal "identity" that we forge is chiselled in turn with the natural cycle of life.
“There are studies that show that feeling young or not so young also depends on which generation we belong to.
Bearing in mind that the moment we lose one or both parents, the feeling of already belonging to the next one who is closer to death by age seems to be the trigger for starting to feel less jovial and more focused on the elderly ”, argues the expert.
Living through the years in one way or another also influences.
It is not the same for those whose day-to-day requires a powerful effort or for those who maintain minor deterioration, says Fernández Dols.
And it has cultural nuances.
“It is associated with getting old, saying goodbye to the new.
In our society it is perceived as being surrounded by the absence of beauty, of aesthetics.
Therefore, one lives with anguish, with obsession, with resistance, which is why it generates so much conflict, because everything that resists persists”, Guerra interrupts.
A conflict that emerges with news like Beyoncé's daughter or with casual images that go through the heart like a bullet.
Other quick cases: Brooklyn Beckham, son of soccer player David Beckham and former Spice Girl and designer Victoria Beckham, married actress Nicola Peltz last April in a mansion in Los Angeles.
The eldest son of this ultra-popular couple is already 23 years old.
Or there are Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, overjoyed to see their offspring Dylan graduate.
And who has not put their hands to their heads comparing the features of Ava Phillippe and her mother, the Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon?
If they come out posing and are the same, despite being more than two decades apart!
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And there are many more.
The problem, defends Fernández Dols, is that we have an altered perception of ourselves.
And that sometimes leads to denying our age.
Suddenly becoming obsessed and starting to take care of yourself or even serious episodes of stress and anxiety.
Pilar Guerra Escudero adds major ailments: "The symptoms can vary depending on the person, but, in general, they affect the way you feel, what you think of yourself and the world, and even behaviors."
"Not accepting our age," says Guerra Escudero, "has a lot to do with the fact that we are not aware that we only enjoy the moment, the here and now."
“There is so much obsession with change for the better that we don't enjoy the moment,” he muses, “and we tend to go more to the past (what could have been and is not) and to the future (what we can change), but we rarely do that. exercise of looking into each other's eyes and knowing that this is the only moment we have”.
An attitude that translates into an increase in surgeries or in the number of people attending consultations for mental health problems.
Guerra Escudero emphasizes that, even so, there is a chronological age and a subjective one.
The first is that given by the almanac, rigid.
The one thrown in our faces by those boys and girls who we thought were unharmed and are dedicated to bidding at auctions, spending millions on bridal links or posing shamelessly on social networks.
“There is almost always dissociation because, as Freud explained, we live in a constant struggle between the three instances of the psyche: our adult I, or Ego, our Superego, which is the oldest part, and our Id, which is the child instance.
Each event is valued by the three, who do not usually agree ”, he wields.
It also happens with the perception we have of others.
As a general rule, we see others as older than ourselves.
“We age gradually and our own aging, the one we see, is contaminated by our own emotions.
That is to say, even if we are constantly looking at ourselves in the mirror or in the photos or recordings, we are always going to see much less significant changes in ourselves, since we are used to that image, because we see ourselves daily.
However, we notice big changes in others because we don't see them every day”, clarifies Guerra Escudero.
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Who has not come across a childhood acquaintance after a long period and has emphasized their transformation?
Who has not come face to face with his limitations in an activity with younger people?
Or who has not recalled those apparently close episodes, such as the Beyoncé concert where she presented her future baby or the birth of a new Beckham, and has glossed over the benefits of the past (instant messaging was an arcadia, meals were provided without
stories
, the series required a long period between episodes)?
Few come out unscathed from these questions.
Although, as Laure Adler notes in the essay
The Night Traveler
, "age is a feeling, not a reality."
This 72-year-old journalist has reflected on her latest book, which has sold thousands of copies in France, about the fear of the passing of time.
And she has reached a conclusion: “By definition, we don't see ourselves getting old.
It comes to us accidentally, like lightning.
And when you are the person in front of you, you say to yourself cruelly: How am I going to spend all day walking among people without them noticing that my face is so wrinkled?
The answer, in the hands of Blue Ivy, Brooklyn or Ava Phillippe.
