Five months from her 60th birthday, my friend, Beth, began lying about her age. She tells others she is fifty-eight, not fifty-nine. 

   Her physical age is probably fifty. But the calendar scares her so much she has vetoed her birth certificate. 

   Too bad.  Wisdom flowing from out of body experiences includes the knowing that chronological age is our least important metric & useless for your soul's age. But, Beth is also the friend that told me, "When you turn 80 you're out of the game" feeding fears that she was leading the charge to marginalize me & my contemporaries. 

   What about a more innovative age model? One that focuses on a spiritual "age" that is free of numbers? Time for a party celebrating the fact that our soul is eternal! 

   Society insists on making age a problem. Any doctor will tell you about eighty-year old patients who seem sixty & vice versa. But most "young" 80 year olds remain victimized by calendar news. People like Beth aggravate that.

   Thus, the thriving cosmetics world & photo apps that enable softening age's attack. For example, vanity caused me to use the new "Portrait" lens on my iPhone for the attached picture. It smoothes wrinkles to suggest youth.

   But, there's no hiding that the the white haired guy is not a young adult. Kindly, my middle-aged children say I seem "younger than ever."

   Why? I asked my son. "It's your agility, voice & your energy, dad," he said, "You take after your mom." (who died at 105.) 

    Why do I allow myself to be trapped in the age game? Because, like all biases, I hate agism & fear nursing home imprisonment. 

    Forty years ago a nurse said, "Mr. Chapman, come meet this nice little old man in room 507." I walked in expecting a tiny creature smiling his way to Death's door. Instead, the six foot patient rose from his bed & shook my hand. 

   "How are we today, Mr. Jones?" the nurse asked in the tone of a nursery school teacher to a four-year old. 

   "Doin' great," Mr. Jones answered energetically. "Remember, I'm just in for gall bladder surgery not for last rites."

  Where was the "little old man" the nurse referenced? To the young nurse, everyone over fifty was old, especially in a patient gown.   

   I heard so many caregivers reference "little old" people that, at age forty-five, I launched a retraining initiative designed to generate respectful treatment of older patients at Riverside Methodist Hospital where I was CEO. 

   How helpful is a spiritual age calculation? It works if we drop numbers & shift to eternity thinking. This is one way I have been changed by the other-consciousness experiences I have been reporting.  

   Begin today to think spiritual not physical age & you will feel a new lightness of being. 

-Erie Chapman