Do we know ourselves?

I am not listing it as a negative factor but it is a defining factor when 'outsiders' are judging someone's age and abilities. Someone with white hair is seen as much older than someone whose hair is not, or not very much.

DH's best friend, three weeks his senior, started going grey at about 18. By the time he reached 50 he was white haired and his skin was beginning to age to that soft pink skin some elderly men have. Otherwise he was tall, slim and very fit, a typical naval officer, which he was. Away on business a colleague offered DH (short, fat and not fit but, at that stage, with only a little grey hair)a lift to friends house. The next day the work colleague asked DH how it was his best friend was so much older than him. The judgement had been made purely on hair colour and how someone's face had aged.

As for knowing myself, I have a much lower opinion of myself than others do. I think that shows that my efforts to be a better person are working!

I loved my grandma's white hair, which she'd had from the age of forty, apparently. As a young woman, she'd had black hair. I didn't believe her at first when I was about nine and she told me that!

I love my white hair, couldn't wait for it to happen!

You can have good skin and still have wrinkles, is what I mean.

White hair is not a sign of not looking good. Why have you listed it with other negative factors, M0?

Wrinkles don't necessarily look bad either. Nor does lack of wrinkles necessarily look good.

There is no stereotypical 70 year old. There is immense variation in how people of that age look (I am 72). Some are fortunate, they age well, skin remains good, hair plentiful and health good; others are white haired wrinkled, with incipient dementia and poor health, and the rest are everything in between.

Unfortunately the stereotypical picture of a 70 year old is the crabbed old lady, dogged by ill health. If anyone says I look good for my age, I will contradict them and say I look like a typical 70 year old who has been fortunate to age well.

Wasn't it Robert Burns who wrote along the lines of 'oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us' ?

I always thought I was a really lovely nice person. Recent events have made me realise that I'm not. I'm better than some but worse than others. My MiL likes me and she's hard to please so I'm not too bad. There are bits of my personality I'd like to change. Perhaps we all need psychoanalysing. If we were would it make for a better world or just be painful to find out what truly makes us tick. [ shrug emotion ]

I was at a meeting and someone asked how old I was. When I replied that I was 70 this year the person said "my goodness you don't look it, nature has been kind to you."

Days later the same thing happened in a different venue. We were discussing age and when I told the person how old I was she replied
"I thought your were about my age 75."

Now I don't know if I look younger than I am or older. Don't even know now how a person is supposed to look when they're in their 70th year.

have fun tunes on my phone for different people ..my phone went off in the library and the librarian laughed and said "you don't look the sort to have that " and there I was thinking I was quite funky

Know what you mean , I had an aunt who i did not get on with very well because I thought she liked to"take over" my brother told me we didn't get on because we were too much alike