Men of an Uncertain Age

The delivery driver put down my groceries on the front step. “There you go, young man”. I looked at him, he was a paunchy guy with a greying beard. It was hard to pin down his age, but he could have been as little as five years older than me.

I’ve always looked young for my age. I suppose I should be flattered. But the older I get, the more ridiculous this kind of thing feels.

‘Young man’ is usually something boys are called by parents or teachers as a reminder of the maturity gap. For instance ‘buck your ideas up, young man’ – emphasis on young. But in other contexts it had a kindly intention. ‘You’re looking smart today, young man’ – emphasis on ‘man’. The inference being ‘You may be young, but I see the man in you’.

After you have reached adulthood, you might still encounter this term of address occasionally from an older man who calls you ‘young man’ or ‘son’, with a paternal tone.

But if it keeps happening into your middle age, it can start to sting a bit. It’s been said that whenever we meet someone, we make an immediate estimate of our relative positions in a hierarchy. This can relate to popularity, power, income, experience, rank etc. but the most basic determinant is surely age. If someone implies that you are their junior, there can be a sense of being diminished.

Of course, I know that this is just a creation of my own mind. Other peoples’ words are their business and how I FEEL is my business – that is mental hygiene. But embedding that perspective can be tricky when other factors pertain.

In our society – all societies in fact – there are certain thresholds that confer ‘grown-up’ status. Marriage, promotion, parenthood, cars, and in the UK particularly, home ownership. No matter how unconventional people may think they are, they usually end up wanting these things; once they have waited long enough for them to feel like choices rather than obligations.

But if you haven’t crossed some of those thresholds, you may struggle with a sense of where you fit in the scheme of things. You might be perfectly happy as you are, but without these things, in societal terms you remain unestablished and unproven, which can make you sensitive to peoples’ perceptions of your maturity. It might be flattering to get ID’d at the off licence, but no-one really wants to stay young forever.

I submit that this feeling could be widespread these days. When so many people are working in the gig economy, with little chance of career advancement; and young couples can’t afford to start a family, those conventional badges of fully-fledged adulthood can seem far off. Many of them, unable to save for a deposit on a house and staying with parents into their thirties, might feel infantilised by their situation. These vital life-stages have been denied to them.

I would like to think that I am indifferent to status and hierarchy; everyone is my equal. But that’s a naïve hope. We can only have a sense of self in relation to our surroundings.

Age is an aura that descends on people gradually. Your life experience becomes a lens through which you view the world, and other people. This is why a conversation among people from the same generation can have a depth and texture that can’t be found across a wider gap. We need the company of people who share the same reference points, a peer group to whom the world looks similar. It can be disorienting to be cut off from that; you find yourself out of context.

I sometimes find myself in the company of men with a heavily ‘worldly wise’ air. Although they are speaking to me, they seem to be communing more with themselves, having made the assumption that I don’t share their life experience and can’t comprehend the full meaning of their words. If the subject of our ages comes up, they are surprised, taken aback even, as they have to recalibrate their sense of seniority.

It’s not just that I don’t have many wrinkles; I think I must have a kind of youthful demeanour. For whatever reason, I haven’t acquired the jaded crust that often accumulates on the persona of a man who has crossed the middle point of life. I have uprooted myself and started again several times, and I haven’t become screwed into the machinery that most people have.

But ‘playing the game’ doesn’t necessarily lead to feelings of satisfaction or security in any case. For those who have worked hard and done what’s expected, modern society offers no guarantees of a smooth progression through life to increased levels of respect and contentment.

From his speaking manner, the guy who delivered my groceries sounded well-educated; middle-class. In becoming a delivery driver, he may well have taken several steps down the income ladder. And I can speculate that he would feel that status disparity differently at each household he visits on his round.

One day he makes a delivery at one of the houses in that shabbily elegant bohemian area. People living in rented flats, many of them probably ex-students. Maybe they remind him of his earlier days. I open the door and he utters a few light-hearted words that remind us both of his (possible) seniority. ‘There you go, young man’.

Maybe he feels a touch of envy. Those conventional life choices that most people opt into; they are not liberating on the whole, they are responsibilities; and if they crumble, the consequences can be devastating. The failure to tick them off may be seen by some as a lucky escape. They confer on peoples’ lives a sense of meaning and fulfilment, but they pay with their freedom.