Confessions of a Neotenous Man

Why I refuse to grow up.

Today I turn 55. While my kids love to mock my age, the truth is that I feel young. Real young. Every day, my top priority is not fulfilling my duties or conforming to social expectations, but having fun. Biologists have an adjective for my state of being: neoteny. We neotenous creatures retain our juvenile traits long into adulthood.

Lactose tolerance is the classic physical example. Human children have always been able to digest milk, but most adults can’t. Thanks to evolved neoteny, however, a sizable minority of grown-ups can now digest milk as if they were kids. Happily, I’m one of them. Not only can I digest milk; I chug it almost every day.

But it’s psychological neoteny that dramatically sets me apart from most people my age. I love silly games, loud music, karaoke, laughing hysterically with friends, animated intellectual discussions, sugary desserts, geological wonders, foreign lands, and the mysteries of archaeology. I have a wild imagination; I’ve written about a hundred playable stories in the genres of fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror, what-if history, pulp, K-drama, Bollywood, and beyond. Most of my friends are younger than me, and I love making new friends all over the world. I’d rather talk to random students than random parents. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The average kid is better than the average adult.

The typical person my age is daydreaming about retirement, if they haven’t retired already. But the thought of retirement repulses me. I love dreaming up new projects, and I don’t like to sit still for more than two hours. I crave activity — and as long as I draw breath, I’ll keep doing what I love. The great Walter Williams died in his car a few minutes after he finished teaching the last class of Ph.D. Microeconomics. He never spent a single day waiting helplessly in bed for death. I want to go like Walter, though I hope to far surpass his 84 years. Per Tolkien, hail the victorious dead!

I have enough self-awareness to realize that my mind is more neotenous than my body. I had the worst accident of my life this January. None of my kids wanted to sled with me on the most amazing ice to blanket northern Virginia in twenty years, so I went alone. Ten minutes later, I had a gruesome ear injury — and no one was around to hear me scream or see the blood trail. The next day, for the first time in my life, I got stitches. Over a hundred of them. I’m fully recovered now, but if my accident had gone a little differently, I might be dead already. If I’d acted my age, none of this would have happened. Since I have an incredible bounty to live for, I plan to start being marginally more careful, so my lifetime of fun isn’t cut short. Next time I go sledding, I won’t start at the very top of the hill, especially if there’s a tiny tree at the bottom. But on the next snow day, I’ll still be on the slopes.

Why do I choose neoteny? Honestly, I struggle to imagine why anyone does otherwise. When we’re young, almost all of us are fun-loving and energetic. Why would you want to spend subsequent decades being boring and tired? Because your peers will disrespect you? Because young people won’t accept you? In our modern anonymous society, social pressure is largely a paper tiger. Fine, act your age in exceptional cases where the cost of non-conformity is high. But never forget it’s an act.

When you were a teenager, did you ever look at middle-aged people watching the news and think, “When I grow up, I want to be like them?” Not bloody likely. In contrast, even the stodgiest middle-aged people occasionally muse, “Oh, to be young again.” Being young is just better. And while biological aging is inevitable, psychological aging is largely a choice. I choose neoteny. So should we all.