28. Fear and Ageing

The last blog finished with the line “here’s to growing up”.

That post was all about life advice and words of wisdom from the older generation, so I thought it was quite a nice line to end on.

Though for full transparency, “here’s to growing up” is something that was very easy to write, but much more difficult to actually feel.

In fact, when the thought of turning a certain age or generally getting older enters my head, I usually get an uncomfortable lurch in my stomach, followed swiftly by a sense of dread and foreboding.

Combine this with a hairline that isn’t what it once was, and grey hairs that seem to be popping out with increasing regularity, and as you can probably tell, we’ve got a pretty self-conscious & neurotic situation on our hands.

I mean, they say grow old with Grace, but the only way I’ll be doing that is if she’s also on the flight to Turkey when I go to get my hairline sorted if it decides to recede any further.

All (very average, sorry) jokes aside, I don’t particularly enjoy the thought of getting older. There’s a serious tension there. Which, to be fair, I imagine is a fairly common thing.

This tension is something that I’ve been pondering recently, and basically how to try and offset it (i.e to not slip into an existential meltdown every time I think about getting older). And decided to share some thoughts on the matter.

A solid bit of life advice that we all know and love is the whole “control the controllables” thing. Basically, do what we can with the stuff that's in our control, and don’t worry about the rest. Although much easier said than done, we’d have to say that that’s generally fairly sound advice.

This is pretty commonly applied to ageing. Obviously, we know we can’t do anything about it. So we also know that worrying about it is a total waste of time.

And although rationally speaking this makes sense, I’ve personally found it a more difficult thing to genuinely feel. It sounds good, but doesn’t hugely resonate with me.

Instead, there’s another thing that I’ve personally found to have had a more notably positive effect when it comes to easing some of that fear of ageing.

And that’s to commit to something now that our future selves will reap the benefits of.

I appreciate that that may potentially sound a bit wishy-washy, so let’s unpack it a little further.

I’ve been doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for just under a year now. You may possibly know this, considering I talk about it almost as much as I talked about running the London Marathon.

I’m pretty woeful at it. I get swept, submitted and generally dominated on the regular. And though I’m better than when I first started, things like my balance, movement and ability to put a submission on anyone is something to behold. And certainly not in a good way.

Though, regardless of my current (lack of) ability, I am genuinely quite excited about the level I could potentially reach in the next 10 years or so.

In 10 years time, I’ll be in my 40s. Which, as you have probably gathered, doesn’t particularly fill me with joy.

However, if I do keep up the sport for that amount of time (which, appreciate is a fairly big if), then you’d like to think that it’s possible to become at least semi-competent at it.

Suddenly, even though the prospect of getting older is hardly compelling, as there’s something to genuinely look forward to, it isn’t quite as daunting. And I imagine the more things we have to look forward to, the more effective this will be.

Jiu-Jitsu is, of course, just one example. I’m not recommending that everyone gives it a go (well, I kinda actually am, it’s bloody good fun!), but I believe this idea applies to any skill or hobby where, with consistent effort, we can see tangible improvement over time.

The list of options is endless really. Whether that’s learning a language, cooking, DIY, painting, writing, our careers, or anything really.

Regardless of the skill, the basic principle of getting better at it is the same: repetition + patience.

To stay on the martial arts theme, I love the following metaphor for getting better at anything “a black belt is just a white belt who never quit”.

As author, and Blogs and Dogs favourite James Clear states “if you maintain the habit, then all you need is time”.

At the heart of it, skill development is about turning up consistently for a long time. By definition, this is something that lends itself to the longer term.

And if we can commit to something that takes time to get better at, then not only does that give us something to occupy our minds now, but I’ve found can make the future a more exciting place to be, and the thought of getting older a slightly less daunting prospect.

And that's with or without a receding hairline.