What's with age

So what's with getting older?  There's the physical aspects that remind you more often that it's happening but there's also the psychological side to it.  We change so gradually over time that it's hard to see the difference.  Every so often I run into an old colleague or someone I haven't seen in a while and they sure do notice the difference.  I like getting older; every year it seems that i'm more comfortable with my life and what i'm doing.  Lately i feel like maybe i'm getting too comfortable with it to the point where i'm not paying any attention to making new goals for myself.  I'm just becoming more content and happy with life in general.  It probably helps that I'm quite happily married and have an interesting and stable job at the moment as well.  Living in America and working in the tech industry sure does make the time fly by though.  It's hard to take that time out to look at the outside.  Lately I often find myself looking at a nice sunset, viewing a strange cloud or just noticing that it's a clear sky way more often.  I'm not sure what it means but it is a large moment in my mind.  Something is telling me that this has meaning and it's important.  Why?  I don't know.

I think part of it is my deep conscious giving me a wake up call to pay attention to the world as it goes by me.

Also; lately, everyone seems to be turning either 30 or turning 40 around me; i'm turning 40... wow.  Maybe when you do you notice other peoples age a bit more often.  Or it might just be that my boss sends out birthday notices at work almost every other day too.  Whatever it might be, it sure does appear that people are getting older more often around me than they used to.

What if we didn't even have birthdays or have any idea on how old we were.  Would we pay anywhere as much attention to it if we didn't keep track of a number?  What could we say about our age then?  Things like.. i've lived about half my life maybe or i'm pretty much all grown up now might be a bit more common.  We place maturity and things to numbers.. I don't think that makes a whole lot of sense though because so many people age differently.  Our age really applies to our conciousness; not our physical age.  When it comes down to it; we are all the age we feel... not the age we are.