Nope.

Dutch motivational speaker Emile Ratelband may feel like a 49-year-old but according to Dutch law he is still 69.

A Dutch court on Monday rejected Ratelband’s request to shave 20 years off his age in a case that drew worldwide attention.

Well he can’t literally shave any years off his age; he was asking to change his records – to lie officially about how old he is.

“Mr. Ratelband is at liberty to feel 20 years younger than his real age and to act accordingly,” Arnhem court said in a press statement . “But amending his date of birth would cause 20 years of records to vanish from the register of births, deaths, marriages and registered partnerships. This would have a variety of undesirable legal and societal implications.”

Plus…it would be false. This idea that we get to erase the truth in favor of our fantasies about ourselves is a bad stupid mistake.

The court said it acknowledged “a trend in society for people to feel fit and healthy for longer, but did not regard that as a valid argument for amending a person’s date of birth.”

Ratelband also insisted his case did have parallels with requests for name and gender changes.

“I say it’s comparable because it has to do with my feeling, with respect about who I think … I am, my identity,” he said.

Yes, and that’s one of the aspects of the “I am what I identify as” craze I hate the most. I hate the idiot narcissism of it, and the dualism (the body is nothing, the imagination is everything), and the denial of reality.