1.15.2025 – age is an issue

age is an issue …
mind over matter – don’t mind …
it doesn’t matter

Check the world wide web and ask who said, Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter, and you will find lots of those meme graphics that attribute the saying to Mr. Mark Twain.

But ask for a citation and you go down that rabbit hole that conveys the information super highway to nether regions of obscurity.

I turned to my favorite website for attribution, Quote Investigator, to learn that the first recorded use of “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter” was in in 1968 and Mark Twain, died in 1910.

According to Quote Investigator, the earliest evidence appeared in an article about aging that was published in multiple newspapers in 1968. The saying was attributed to an anonymous scientific researcher. The prefatory phrase was somewhat shorter:

As one government researcher puts it: “Aging is a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

That line, according to QI appeared in the June 28 1968 , Statesville Record and Landmark, in a story headlined Facts Listed On Aging (Quote Page 7-A, Statesville, North Carolina).

Once, said, the line took on a life of its own and it appeared in print over and over through the years, attributed to Jack Benny, Satchel Paige and Muhammad Ali as well as Mr. Twain.

Just think of what you could get away back when attribution of almost anything wasn’t a few clicks away.

Regardless or iregardless* of who said it, I say it again, Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter and I am saying it to say, Happy Birthday today to my wife.

I hope you don’t mind and it doesn’t matter to me as we battle that issue of mind over matter together.

Love you!

*Use regardless, as irregardless is a nonstandard, redundant word considered incorrect in formal writing, though dictionaries acknowledge its usage to mean the same as “regardless” (despite everything) due to a double negative (ir- + -less) and confusion with “irrespective”. While some find “irregardless” acceptable in very informal speech, sticking to “regardless” avoids criticism and ensures clarity in professional or academic settings, as it’s the universally accepted, standard term, but I digress.