Amanda Lamb: What does it mean to be ageless?

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be AGELESS like the title of my podcast. At the most basic level, it means not being defined by your age, that there are no limits to what you can do at any age. But it’s important to note in this equation that you cannot turn back the clock. You can be young at heart, but you can never be young again.

I remember my mother once telling me that when you get older, you are still basically the same person you were when you were 16. Sure, you don’t look the same. You have more life experience, more wisdom, and hopefully, better coping skills, but the core you is still the same.

Recently, I went to see one of my favorite bands from my teen and college years with a friend. I spent weeks picking out my outfit and imagining how incredible it would be to feel eighteen again, talking about it incessantly up until the big day. To be fair, nothing we plan months in advance is ever as good as we imagine it will be (example: New Year’s Eve). But still, I had high hopes. The concert turned out to be amazing, as did the incredible digital display which clearly did not exist when I was a teenager. But I left feeling a little disappointed. What I realized after a few days of feeling this way was that I discovered I couldn’t just go to a concert and find a time machine to my former self. Life doesn’t work that way.

So, how do we regain the parts of us from our youth that we want to reconnect with – the parts that have been squeezed to the back of our brains after years of stress, responsibility, and the chaos of the modern world? I’ve been doing a lot of things this year – a year I’m calling My Adult Gap Year – to try and figure this out. I’ve allotted more time to the things that give me joy-family, friends, volunteering, writing, travel, yoga, reading, being outdoors. And all of this has made a difference, to be sure, but I’m still in search mode. I’ve come to understand that the search for our authentic selves is a key part of the journey, the process that leads us to purpose.

One of my favorite quotes from Nelson Mandela is: “There is no passion to be found in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

The meaning of this quote can, and has been, interpreted in many different ways. The way I see it is that we should be living our best lives in every moment possible – at home, at work, at play. And the good news is that the older we are, the more we understand what things are important, and what things are not. So, to simplify, we should be doing more of what is important to us, and less of the things that are not. And while we can’t be 16 again, we can embody the things that we loved about our 16-year-old selves. This is what it means to be AGELESS.