You Look Marvelous: The Benefits of Self-Deception

When you look in the mirror, how old is that handsome devil looking back at you? There’s a good chance that he or she seems younger than the cold date on their birth certificate. It doesn’t hurt that we automatically shift our pose to accentuate our best angles, but the youthful fiction goes far beyond physical self-delusions. 

In a broad meta-analysis comparing one’s chronological age with subjective age, Martin Pinquart and Hans Wahl found that children, on average, felt three years older, but once we hit 25, the tables turn. By the time we make it into our 60s, the real-to-imagined age discrepancy ranges from 11 to 21 years younger. As the anonymous ditty goes, “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

So, what are the penalties for this wishful thinking? Absolutely nothing! In fact, these misperceptions shower us with rewards. Like, when does that ever happen?

Heidelberg researcher Markus Wettstein and his colleagues gleaned data from a longitudinal study of over 5,000 Germans from 40 to 95 years of age and found that feeling younger than one’s chronological age granted wonderful health benefits. Subjective youth buffered older adults from the negative effects of stress. They enjoyed increased mental functioning, lower levels of inflammation, fewer hospitalizations, greater feelings of well-being, and an extended lifespan. The older the participant, the stronger the protective effect. Not too shabby for self-deception.

As with everything else in life, too much of even a good thing can be detrimental. Maria Blöchl and her colleagues from yet another German University found the same widespread perceptual fiction about age and similar benefits. However, when this misperception goes too far, we get stung. So, how far is too far? They report that people in their 60s cross this damaging threshold when they think of themselves as more than 25 years younger. Don’t go looking for a Bill Belichick girlfriend or try to go viral on TikTok.

Whew! I have nothing to fear. I concede that I feel younger than my chronological age, but I’ve never felt younger than my own daughter. Indeed, a man my age considering himself to be in his early 40s strikes me as delusional.

What are the takeaways here? Let the clichés begin. An aging Mae West quipped, “You are never too old to become younger.” There’s the ever-popular, “Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional.” I can’t bring myself to type the “as you feel” platitude. Penning “When I’m sixty-four” while in his mid-twenties, Paul McCartney imagined old age with a wink—an unusual projection into the future for such a young artist.  

Pop music isn’t the only place where youth gets reimagined. Centuries earlier, Miguel Cervantes gave us Don Quixote, who defiantly crafted his own youthfulness in the twilight of life. The aging protagonist reinvents himself as a knight-errant who vibrantly tilts windmills and incites all manner of chaos by imagining himself a steadfast defender of truth. Though the world laughs at his antics, his youthful vigor drives his adventures—a perfect illustration of feeling younger than your years. The fumbling would-be hero embodies Bob Dylan’s lyric, “Ah, but I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.”

How should we go about deceiving ourselves? I have my own tonic. My young granddaughters have erased a decade of my subjective age through constant invigoration. I roll on the floor, laugh loudly, and generally act silly in the service of entertaining them—things I would avoid were I a proper, crusty sexagenarian. As George Bernard Shaw once observed, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” I severely reduced my capacity for mirth before my granddaughters appeared; that deficit has been rectified.

What are you doing to shave years off that lady who stares back at you in the mirror? You might whisper to the image that she looks amazing and feels even grander. Better yet, kick a ball around, take a class, or dance like no one’s watching. You need not don a barber’s brass basin as a helmet like Don Quixote and tip windmills, but acting younger—within the 25-year limit—reinforces merely thinking so. If you need any suggestions, go by McCurry Park on a Saturday morning and learn from the experts. Enjoy the ride—rarely does fiction reward us more richly than facts.