How old is your mythical, essential self?

When your eyes are closed and you are imagining yourself interacting with the world as your ideal self, how old are you?

When I look in the mirror, I see someone who is old and gray. But when I don’t look in the mirror, I feel like I am 20. I feel like I can run for miles and jump high and do anything I decide I want to do. Inside, I am the most perfect I ever was still.

Reality sets in, as is its wont, and I am 56. I can’t dive off the diving board because it hurts my heels. I can’t ride my bike 100 miles because I don’t even have the stamina to go 40 miles. My memory fails me regularly.

But when there is nothing to remind me of all that, I am still 20 and I feel like that’s how the world should see me. Not as this old, gray non-entity that everyone ignores.

How old do you feel, inside, when no one is looking and your true self can appear?