I turn, gulp, 60 this year, so this bit in The Times (UK, not US) really hit all my pain points when I was lying in bed, sipping my morning tea, reading it yesterday. It’s paywalled and impervious to assaults by the 12 Foot Ladder, but I can summarise it for you.
It starts off in confessional mode, with former Men’s Health editor, Phil Hilton writing that on the morning of his 60th birthday, before my family had woken up, he went out “for an icy, lung-aching run and a fairly manic bunch of pull-ups and dips”. The fam had suggested (with eye rolls) that he might like to skip the torture that day and instead head straight out for breakfast, but “this milestone birthday was not comfortable and I needed that workout. What was I trying to prove? I was trying to prove that I was still me.”
Testify, Phil.
My self-image could not accommodate being that old. I didn’t feel I had the necessary experience for the job. At 59 I could squeeze on to the same psychological raft as people in their forties, but turning 60 pitched me overboard into that section of society that take coach holidays. (Nothing wrong with group travel, but you know what I mean.)
I feel it.
Unlike Phil, I didn’t start worrying about it three years out. Matter of fact, I wasn’t even really thinking much about it until peeps started bugging me about what I was ‘going to do’ for the big day.
I dunno. Some deadlifts, walk the dogs, go to jujtisu in the evening, maybe.
But they were talking about a huge blowout party.
Sigh.
I just cannae be fucked with that stuff anymore. It’s thousands of dollars, weeks, if not months of organisation, all for three or four hours of gadflying from one punter to the next. Oh, and a hangover. Let’s not even pretend I’d be dodging that bullet.
So if I have to do anything to mark the occasion, it’ll probably be a trip overseas. Maybe to Seoul. I know a great hotel there with an awesome gym.
The par that really struck me in Hilton’s piece was this:
I’ve known people taken down by diseases that seem designed by some particularly gifted psychopath. I’ve seen people slip incrementally into bodies they didn’t plan to have. The grumpy old man stereotype, I firmly believe, is partly about a struggle with change. Being young felt powerful and exciting, hormones and muscles all worked to set you up to compete and achieve — there were careers to be built and relationships to be found. Turning 60 in a body that feels significantly less capable must contribute to the sense that ageing is about loss — loss of vitality, muscle and agility. And that’s bound to make you irritable. I now work out to feel content, to fend off that sense of everything drifting away.
This really speaks to me. I’m not an athlete. I’m never going to be on the cover of Men’s Health. I’m just content to feel content these days, and I get that from a couple of hours a week on the mats at Jujitsu, two or three heavy lifting sessions in my home gym. And walking the dogs.