Do you become a different person every seven years?
The argument goes that every cell in our bodies is completely replaced over that time span, making us, essentially, a whole
new us every seven years. Philosopher Rudolf Steiner believed in a theory of human development based on seven-year cycles. Astrologists subscribe to continual seven-month-growth phases relating to the 12 signs of the zodiac, with a complete cycle (or lesson) taking seven years. It’s a popular number when it comes to life theories.
When I think of my own life at seven, 14, 21, 28, and 35, there are definite, super-significant life shifts I can recognise. Admittedly, I’m highly susceptible to finding the truth in this kind of thing (never have I been more unintentionally creative than after two years of seeing a kinesiologist who specialised in Neuro Emotional Technique – look it up – by which stage I had clearly run out of stressful memories to unblock but didn’t want to let him down). But even through my most sceptical filter, I don’t think I could say the same thing about the years of my life divisible by six, or eight. The sevens really were key ages for me – and I can sense that the one coming up next year (I’m not yet ready to say the number, because it can’t possibly be true) will be similarly life-shifting.
I can’t speak to the early years of our cover girl Lara Worthington, but the fact that she became a mother just before her 28th birthday, the thing that she says – in our story on p108 – changed the person she was more than anything that came before, including the death of her father at 20 and meeting her husband Sam at 26, backs the theory. Having known Lara for a long time and watched her confidence and sense of self explode since having her sons Rocket and Racer, it does feel like there’s something more powerful at play than just the usual maturing of a woman moving into motherhood.
Of course, while the new cells theory is nice – I’d love to have an all-new bod next year, thanks! – it’s not quite as simple as that. No matter how we look at it, we are our birth age, not the age of our cells. But ageing is different for all of us, as we explore in-depth from p62. And it’s about so much more than wrinkles and greying hair (although they play a significant role) – it’s also how we dress, the music we listen to, whether or not we use voicemail, how much we appreciate our sleep, the thickness of our brows and – chiefly – if we think Facebook is addictive and thrilling, a necessary evil or the place where our mothers live.
In a time when enough barre classes can make any 51-year-old look 15 (from the back, at least) and it’s all too easy to jab away our lines and balayage our hair to its sun-kissed childhood hues, there are new factors we use to give away our birth age. But our true age isn’t all bad. Debunking the complete-cell-regeneration theory is the fact that some cells in our bodies are with us from birth to death: the inner lens cells of the eye, the neurons in our cerebral cortex – which is the part of the brain that makes us human, determining personality and intelligence as well as thinking and perception – and the muscle cells of the heart. Our eyes, our brain and our hearts – three places I’m more than happy to carry the wisdom of age. And for everything else, there’s makeup.
Enjoy the issue,