‘Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.’
This quote from David Bowie has long been my favourite way of thinking about getting older. His description of it as an extraordinary process seems about right. You slowly become the person that you always should have been. You know who you are. You know what you like, and what you don’t. You know what annoys you and what gives you joy. You know what gives you energy and the things that can drag on your life. You finally know how pointless it is to worry about what people think of you.
It takes time to get there. We often think about ageing as a gradual decline that increasingly imposes undesired limitations on what we can do. In many ways though it’s also like a slowly unfolding freedom. A freedom where I have less and less time for (and care less and less about) the things that I once thought were consequential but which actually really don’t matter. The true substance of life emerges gradually and lethargically, like a cat stretching in the sun.
The Bowie quote comes from an interview he did in 1999 with Aaron Hicklin. Hicklin notes how Bowie had no time for nostalgia, and said that if you’re pining for youth ‘you only live in memory…a place that doesn’t exist’. His creativity and energy right up until the end of his life was testament to his desire to always evolve and grow. I hope that I can achieve the same.
I write a weekly Substack of digital trends, transformation insights and quirkiness. To join our community of thousands of subscribers you can sign up to that here.
To get posts like this delivered straight to your inbox, drop your email into the box below
Photo by Syuhei Inoue on Unsplash
Leave a Reply