Fear of Aging

I recently endured, rather than celebrated, a significant birthday. Because of early career advancement (and dating aspirations), I had once been someone who had made efforts to appear older than my years. For example, I would wear non-prescription “reading glasses” and add grey coloring to my hair in my attempts to appear more mature. With these assumed years added, I had hoped to be taken more seriously, respected as older and wiser, listened to. So needless to say, with each birthday came a reason to celebrate (plus I love cake). However, this birthday hit me hard. My reading glasses have become a necessity, and the greying product unnecessary. I looked in the mirror and saw glimpses of not just my parents but of my grandparents; when filling out forms, I find that I need to go a long way down the list of age ranges to check the appropriate box and have to scroll longer to find my birth year on the drop-down menus. A drop-in to get my hair cut, typically a 15-minute at most experience is a time frame that provides the added benefit of limiting opportunity for irrelevant chatter. However, apparently not short enough to prevent the clipper’ed handed person from asking me if I was “semi-retired.” This last anniversary of my trip around the sun forced me to look at myself as others might see me, and through borrowed eyes, I became old.

My parents, in very advanced years, are struggling; conversations are challenging, with stories and news constantly being repeated, for them things of distant past have reappeared as matters that suddenly need to be discussed as though somehow relevant to today. Items of inconsequence have taken on meaning and regularly go missing (or are, according to them, stolen), the innocent behaviors of others are interpreted as being untoward, meaning is attributed to things that in the past would not have been worth contemplating, empathy is fading. And as I witness their vulnerability as they are stepping away from life, the time that I have left, not on the planet but on the planet as someone with a sound mind, has me watching the clock.

Age, we are constantly told, is a mental exercise; the value we attribute to the years since our birth is related to attitude; being "experienced" versus being "old" is nothing more than perspective. But when society responds to us a certain way, it's hard to keep our inside voice as the loudest one that we hear. If the clock were to be set back, I’m not sure what things, if anything, even with hindsight, I might do differently. In fact, the lack of hindsight and being oblivious to possible consequences were the essential ingredients needed to take the risks that led to so many adventures; and perhaps without these experiences, my enthusiasm for wanting to keep the adventures going would not be so strong. So, does the secret of keeping society's messaging that keeps telling us that we are "old" at bay involve a willingness to continue to take risks?

With recognition that the number of years left to earn a wage is limited, financial security suddenly takes on more meaning. Knowing that a broken bone will not mend as fast and that the body, the senses, reflexes will slow brings forth the realities of physical limitations. And so, with these truths, an aversion to risk-taking seems a natural consequence of the aging process, and without risk, rewards beyond safety and security seem beyond reach. Playing safe can only give us, at most, greater odds of being able to maintain the status quo; it can rarely give us something new, something greater, something that we may have held as an aspiration to reach or achieve. And I think perhaps for me, this, more than anything, has been the real cause of my age-related panic; it is the signaling that dreams that had always been the source of moving me forward may have now become nothing more than unlivable fantasy.

Bravery is not a willingness to tackle the greatest threats but rather the overcoming of our greatest fears. A seasoned dragon slayer is not brave for entering the fight, but rather bravery for the slayer comes from being able to walk away from the fight if it would serve everyone better to do so. As I write this, I understand that I’m lacking bravery, that fear brought from aging is my nemesis, and that my challenge is not to try to recover the recklessness of youth that would have me running to leap headfirst over the ledge but instead my challenge is to recognize that maturity provides us the skills to walk confidently along the edge, it gives us the capacity for reflection and allows us a high vantage point from where we can see not only the failings of the past but also a future that is still brimming with possibility. It just requires us to be brave enough to try.