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To accept it – or not – that is the question

Sometimes in life subjects to blog about sneak up you – as has mine today.

When one gets to a certain age it is in the nature of things that human beings reach a point where, unless they are very careful, they begin to drop ‘off the pace’.

From this spring such phenomena as the delusion that, irrespective of all evidence to the contrary, one remains eternally 25 – well, okay (as time passes) 35 … 45 … 55 – when somewhere in the background the blackboard of life is chalking up the reality that one is ten, fifteen, twenty or even thirty years beyond those milestones and counting … and then come frankly the laughable absurdities of the famed ‘mid-life crisis’, i.e. marked by symptoms (in the case of males) such as suddenly wearing age-inappropriate clothes and/or hair styles, expensive purchases of open-topped sports cars and the aggressive, not to mention desperate, pursuit of women closer to  their daughter’s age that they are.

In my own case it was at about fifty that I first began to notice – or have it pointed out to me by my kids – that I was getting forgetful; repeating myself; not remotely interested in the latest new technology, fashions, trends, music; and was seemingly becoming more reactionary in my views upon most everything.

In what I have tapped out on my computer screen so far I have been dealing in generalities and (to use a painting analogy) applying my thoughts with broad brush strokes: there are, of course, exceptions, degrees of extent and even stages in every process.

To take a case in point, some individuals seem to remain ‘young at heart’ for longer than others and are lauded or admired for it.

One of my closest pals at school exhibited little if any awareness of growing older even as he did. In that sense he was both very popular and also a source of envy and awe amongst the rest of us.

He was heavily into three things: sports of all kinds, partying and heavy metal music as an eighteen year old taking his ‘A’ levels.

Two decades later – by then a successful grain merchant commuting every day into the City – he was still to be found (after work) right down in front of the stage at the Hammersmith Apollo theatre at ear-splitting Judas Priest concerts, ‘head-banging’ away amongst the Hell’s Angels-types in his pin-stripe suit.

[It was that year, coincidentally, that he died of a heart attack sitting bolt upright in a commuter train on its way to Guilford, but that’s by the by].

It might have been very different.

From another viewpoint – among his contemporaries who by then had perhaps acquired wives, family responsibilities, wealth, a liking for good food and wine and quite possibly two or three stone in weight – he might have been (and probably was) regarded as a bit of a saddo, ironically by some of the very same people who also loved him as “good old Pete” for continuing to burn the proverbial candle at both ends.

Two other examples: sport and music.

Inevitably, sporting careers are dicey items which can be affected by injury, bad luck and/or random stuff such as a one-off political boycott of an Olympics or even a Covid-19 crisis.

You can start as a prodigy in some football academy and gain early fame, then get ‘brought on’ as you grow into your body and develop as a player; sometimes mature into international class, sometimes not; hopefully enjoy a few ‘exceptional years’; gradually lose your youthful ‘devil may care’ approach, speed and reflexes and either react by playing in a different manner or position … and, if you can’t, possibly fade out of contention for the first team squad and/or get sold to a team in the Championship. Nothing you can do about any of that, it comes with the territory.

Ditto with music.

If lucky, that youthful, good-looking kid with a voice and an ability to hold a tune can become an instant teenage heart-throb and for five years or more launch a thousand fan club magazine front covers, make fabulous amounts of cash and live the life of Reilly.

However, by say thirty, perhaps having put on weight after all the excess and having a series of weaves to maintain his disappearing hairline, he’ll probably be reduced to eking out a living by appearing on BBC One’s The One Show, Celebrity Pointless and I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here … the subject of countless comments among the general public of the style “Crickey, he’s not fared so well, has he?” and/or “What’s he still doing in the business?”

What’s better – to live in the present without worrying what the future holds … or to grow older gracefully?

I began this piece by admitting that blog subjects sometimes sneak up on you.

This one did firstly because – when I turned on Radio Five Live upon coming to the computer – host Dotun Adebayo was running a segment on “What is the song that brings back memories – good or bad – of your taste in music when you were a youngster?”

And secondly, because I saw in the newspaper yesterday that Sean Connery had turned 90.

 

 

 

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About Bryn Thomas

After a longer career in travel agency than he would care to admit, Bryn became a freelance review of hotels and guest houses at the suggestion of a former client and publisher. He still travels and writes for pleasure. More Posts