We never really get old...

I have a theory about the aging process and our individual ways of coping, adjusting and otherwise reconciling ourselves to the most fundamental aspect of life, we get old, older and oldest.

It has been my observation that, as individuals who change and adjust to the effects of aging, there is a near universal tendency to 'lock into' a mental self-image that is set at what we looked like at a certain age in our lives. In other words, in our minds eye, we always look the same as we did at this 'lock-in age' and that image simply never changes. No matter how much old(er) we may get, once this mental image of ourselves is set, it remains the same, irrespective of how many more Birthdays we amy enjoy.
As a concept, this is not as outre or exotic and weird as it may sound, it is best to begin with a little thought experiment, this is an exercise that you can try anytime and if you approach it with an open mind, you will see what I mean.
Lets try the following image/thought experiment:

...imagine that you are walking along a sidewalk in a small suburban town. There are stores and shops on both sides of the street. This is a small town, and we are in what the locals might call the 'old section', meaning that there are no gas stations or strip malls, but there are sidewalks (with parking meters). In any event, the town is small, so the street is only two lanes wide, with very little traffic, so you can see clearly in all directions up, down and across the street. As you walk along the sidewalk, you glance across the street at the reflection in the plate glass windows of a store. You see a person ( you, of course) walking along in that reflection.
The question is, do you immediately recognise yourself?

The word immediately is in italics because we know that you do recognise yourself in the reflection, but the thrust of the question is, is there a slight lag, a moment of non-recognition? Do you think, even just for a split second, "that can't be me" when you see the image in the glass?
Most of us do have that moment of not identifying the reflected image with 'the self'. And the reason that we have a very momentary 'lag' is because the person in the s reflection in the store window simply does not look like the person you think you should see .

Of course, you immediately see that it is you...but it is that 'lag' that tells you that some part of your mind was expecting to see a person who looked differently . It is this 'differently' part of the reflection, the person who you did not immediately recognise, that is you at the age you locked in at. That you have in your mind the accurate self-image from an age in the past is demonstrated by the 'mis-identiticiation'.
In the part of the mind that maintains our physical self-image, you will never get older than that person, the one that you did not see in the reflection.

The specific age at which a part of us decided to lock-in appears to vary from person to person. Among people who recognise their 'lock in' age, the common factor appears seems to emerge, is that the age that (a person) 'locks in' at, coincides with the point in their lives that they had achieved everything they were taught to expect from life.
Take a moment, remember how life looked to you when you were 13 or 14 or 16 years old. You had dreams and hopes and plans. Underlying these dream and hopes were certain expectations of what life was supposed to be about, what you thought it meant to become an adult...when you grew up.

When you reached the point (in your life) of having, doing, acquiring these things, you stopped getting older. Be it family (a common lock-in point) or wealth or career success or anything else, a part of your mind, your personality, your self decides in some fashion that this is the point to hold your physical image and never updates it.

That is the person you were expecting to see in the reflection in the plate glass window.