| So the main thrust of this op-ed is that when you get old, you're allowed to settle comfortably into your routines. Those people you've been avoiding? Keep on avoiding them. Kids playing shitty new music that sounds more like a cat being dragged across a cheese grater than the dulcet tones of a young lover? Don't listen to it. Friends going up to Scotland for the weekend to view, and maybe participate in, some improv? Fuck em; stay home and watch The Great British Baking Show again. Which is all fine, but there's nothing intrinsic about aging that allows you to do those things, or about being young that makes those things impossible. There are good things about getting older. I'm with the person I love, and I don't have to figure out how to hack Tinder in a desperate attempt to get laid. I'm making more money now than I ever have. I know, more or less, who I am and what I want to do. But I'm also closer to losing all of those things, every day. That's what aging is, and that's why we react so viscerally against it. I used to be an athlete. Now, I have arthritis in my knees and shoulders, and my physical prowess is on a slow but inevitable decline. I make plenty of money, but that comes with significantly more responsibility, and the constant worry that I'm getting too old to be taken seriously as an engineer. I know who I am and what I want to do, but I worry that, despite all of the good choices I've made, I'll never be able to actually retire and do those things. That's aging. I've been telling people I don't want to go to some shitty rock concert for decades. I didn't need to turn forty to feel that it was allowed. |