Life expectancy in The United States is 77 years. That means that at 55 years of age you have alot more behind you than ahead of you. You're getting old. You sure aren't new.

Such thinking as "you're only as old as you feel" is wishful thinking and displays the modern American middle-class penchant for ignoring inconvenient facts behind a smokescreen of cheer, good fellowship and empty optimism. As though impersonal facts can be changed by having a proper personal attitude. Doesn't work.

Such an attitude also betrays an immature and shallow feeling that there's something wrong with being old, that's it's something to be ashamed of and so vigorously denied. Since one has no control over one's age I don't see why one should be ashamed of being old or interested in denying it.