Getting older is getting easier
When I was a teacher, there was a segment of my colleagues who would often lament that working with teenagers made them feel old. Responding to the warp speed trend changes that only teenagers care about and keep up with, a segment of my peers would remark 'oh I don't know what lit means, I'm so old'. I never really knew how to respond, I'd often think - well, of course you're older than teenagers, you already knew that. But also I'd think 'why do you want to keep up with kids? It's exhausting and not really very rewarding'.
I'm lucky because I've found getting older much easier. In fact it seems most years are a bit kinder than previous ones. Of course there are ups and downs, hard things as well, but in general I feel much more content at 33 than I did at 23. In a lot of ways I was quite bad at being young. I didn't enjoy primary school much and high school was quite boring until I was 15 or 16 or so and matured a bit more. I don't drink alcohol (never have) and have no interest in drugs. I'm completely happy sitting quietly on the grass or meandering around in my car taking pictures of trees. It was a bit tricky when I was in Uni, I didn't really want to go to the pub, the bar or the club - I was much happier going to friends' houses or getting lunch. Now that I'm a bit older, it feels like my friends have caught up to what I like and it's great.
There's a nervousness and egotistical anxiety that I observe with people vainly chasing youth, self-conscious and embarrassed about their age. But aging is natural, it's what you've been doing since the second you became alive. You can't fight it, it will win. No one lives forever, no one looks young forever, no one acts young forever. And more than that, there's something so grim and pointless in observing people who try. I think we've all seen or met someone who just doesn't accept that they are 10 years older than they are acting, and it's a bit lame. I think we've all met someone with tattoo'd eyebrows, an obvious combover, or too much botox and just thought 'ah, let it go, give in - life's about more than this'. Maybe that's cruel of me to say, but still, you ARE old and we can tell, who's the performance serving?
I think that being accepting and graceful is very under-rated. Sometimes it feels like even in Australia we live in a place influenced by Hollywood and its capricious and predatory hunger for youth and beauty. It's unhealthy and ultimately futile. I wonder, those who do worry about aging a lot, do they like that about themselves? Is that how they want to experience the world?
Of course, it's fair to say I'm lucky in that I work in a field that doesn't really reward youth or looks. Unlike some corporate positions or competitive industries, where good looks might make or break someone's chances, or in something like acting where it's difficult to be an actor if you're not really hot. So, yes, I am lucky, that's for sure - but equally I think those fields have a bit of circular logic, survivor bias and the people objecting are also most often loudly participating so it doesn't add up.
Something else I like about getting older is just less drama. Life feels more mellow and calm, and I like that. When I was younger I had these really specific dreams - for ages I wanted to save a lot of money by living cheap, buy a plot of land and farm it while working very little. That's a fun dream and I did some cool stuff learning about it, but at the end of the day it was naive. I would miss people too much. Now, I tend to just want to pay off my mortgage, get on with my job, make art and being kind to the people and places around me. That's incredibly normal and no one will make a movie about it, it's too common a story, but I realise, more and more, that I'm a pretty 'normal' person. Most of us want a version of something pretty similar: no big stressors, home, community, belonging, material comfort and joy. Maybe we get those things from different places, but we aren't completely, and radically, different from one another. I realise this more and more as I get older and it makes me like the people around me more and more too. I see more of myself in them and empathy feels pretty easy.
I think some people are trained (whether they realise it or not) to constantly comment on their age, but I think that it feels a bit unnecessary. There's so much else to be noticing - aren't you grateful you're not a frenetic, confused and grasping teen anymore? Isn't it easier just to watch the sun set instead?
Some things to read:
I really liked this interview with musician Julia Jacklin, she speaks really eloquently about maturing, getting older and how that hardens the questions she asks, this quote resonated:
"For this album campaign, I love the record and decided to tour it, but am feeling the pressure of, “Okay. Let’s take this to the next level.” All of that feels separate to the music and to what makes me feel good. ....I sometimes look people dead in the eye and am like, “I’m an indie singer songwriter. This is the pinnacle of success for me. What are you talking about? Just please. Tell me what you mean by the next level of success. I don’t think you know.”This is one of my favourite articles ever, and is a good reminder that as we age we don't necessarily know best. A parent writes to a psychologist, worried that her son is making a bad decision by wanting to get into comedy, the psychologists' reply is amazing: "you assume that you have insight to offer based on your age, but what you’re actually offering is an opinion based on your temperament".
If you haven't read Oliver Burkeman's 4000 weeks I would unconditionally recommend it. It's a bizarre book about how finite life is and how our experience of time lengthens when we stop trying to optimise, make efficiencies and cram it all in. A great example: Oliver goes to a museum and sits in front of a single painting for THREE FULL HOURS. No phone, no pen, no nothing. He writes about how that three hours felt like a lifetime - stretching and unfolding, not always pleasant, but ultimately quite revealing. He then returns back to his the office where he is trying to 'hack' his way to more efficiency. He finds that time sped past and nothing was accomplished. Life just ran out. Hours he'll never have back, crammed full of a frenetic and jagged feeling of never having enough. The book is all about making life feel longer by letting go of the impulse to do it all, because you can't, you won't and there's no benefits to trying to. I'm a big fan of arguments to do less, though I rarely follow that advice to a T.