What is Your Age: Physically!

When Did It All Start!

Right from the school days and even way before that, the kids are taught to tell their age based on the time of their birth into the world, which is to come out of the womb into the most complicated phase called as life. While one cannot find out when such a practice started, humankind was not kind enough and has started to guesstimate the age of earth itself, even though there is no living or perhaps no nonliving creature either which has witnessed the bith of earth.

Is Age A Simple Subtraction?

Simple as it may sound to just subtract the current date or year from the date and year of birth, in order to arrive at the number that would be considered as age in the society. This had been the practice since time immemorial and probably the easiest of ways to state the age. However, while there is no problem in checking out the current date and year, when the creation happened is a huge question!

Date of Conception or Inception!

There are two major phases that happens in order to ensure that the baby is born. The parents copulate and the sperm of the male fertilizes the egg of the female so as to initiate a new life. This is probably the instant when the person is born. However, the date and time when the person comes out of the womb of the mother to survive out of the warm, dark and cozy liquid medium in a tummy bag is taken into consideration.

Ignorance May Not Be Blissful Always:

The babies do not learn the language right when they are born and by the time they start to speak and tell their age, they would be starting off stating they are three or four years old. Would not they wonder what happened to the numbers 1 and 2, if our number system actually begins with these ages! Why to make the person age even before they realize about their very existence.

Completed Years!

Even if it is agreed universally that the time when the baby is born has to be considered, there are two ways of telling age. When someone says that they are ‘x years old’ it means that they have completed x number of years and are into the age of ‘x+1′ years.

Minimizing Offense:

Since asking the questions “How old are you?” may offend some people, especially the age-conscious ladies (age-agnostic would have been the right term here), who may take it very offensive and cause huge hue and cry about the same, the question has recently been rephrased to “How young are you?” which is again asking the person about their chronological age. Here, the person is supposed to state the current running age (x), wherein this can be translated to age in terms of completion (years old) which would be x-1 years, which most of the respondents are not aware of. They misunderstand and state the same number for both the ‘old’ and ‘young’ questions.

While the chronological age that mentions the existential years of the person based on the calendar years is a generic way to calculate and compare multiple individuals, it is necessary to not cause panic about the age and take it as just a number of indication. There are may other types of ages that should also be given equal importance.