There is no way around the fact that I am getting older. It’s all going to nature’s plan, and the usual suspects have arrived: silver hairs among the mouse brown, wrinkles, scraggy neck and so on. All dealable-with, of course, and not all that upsetting, to be honest: good material for a whinge, which is always useful.
I got an age-related thrill recently when, on my birthday, a paper described me as 35, which was delightful (the publication may or may not have its the digits backwards, but I’d hate to name and shame over this unexpected, kind deed).
The physical decrepitudes, big and small, are inevitable: eyesight getting worse, hair thinning, girth expanding (thank you menopause, you bitch). We know these are to be expected. It’s the sneaky things that are getting to me now.
The biggest shocker is the ever-present fear.
We have all known the fear at some point. Anyone who has ever woken poisoned with a booze hangover will know that version of it, the one when you are convinced that you have ruined not just one night of your life but your whole life. It's a chemical fear. And, seeing as I have mentioned the menopause, I can tell you that there is a nasty body pop that comes just before a hot flush that is a very mean jab of the fear. So if you see a red-faced older woman in the street, drenched with sweat and looking distressed, be kind: she might have just had such an attack.
I guess this lingering, age-related fear is, in some way, a realisation that everything is truly changing in your life.
I once heard a story from a political spin doctor about returning to the city centre from Áras an Uachtaráin with Charlie Haughey after he handed in the government seal to the president. They travelled in a convoy with motorcycle outriders and sirens blaring, breaking red lights in the rush to be important. But on the return journey, at each corner the guard of honour slipped quietly away, and suddenly the driver of the car realised he couldn’t just take over the road or they would all be killed. They were back in the real world.
I think getting older is a bit like that. The older generation is slipping away and now we are in charge. We have responsibility thrust upon us. There’s no more running wild and letting someone else take care of you. And it’s all a bit frightening.
There is the worry that we will leave the place worse than we got it, which would be unforgivable. There comes a creeping realisation of mortality, the very tangible notion that death is coming closer all the time. I will tell you right now: I am not a fan of death, at all (at all). I don’t look forward to my own. As for other people dying, the world is not a better place for us having lost our loved ones. (And although it may make room for new people, I’d like to point out that there is no guarantee that the newbies will be any use at all; what if they’re rubbish?).
Growing older seems to give the truth to so many cliches that you feel like you're Polonius in a very bad production of Hamlet.
I work in the creative worlds of acting and writing, where fear is run of the mill. You are constantly exposed to criticism, and failure is an assumed position that you work from or unwittingly towards. I have found, however, that getting older means everything is heightened. The jeopardy is greater, somehow, and there’s no adrenalin rush when something is conquered or successful; rather, there is now further to fall.
As you move on, you get fussier about the work, so you are tougher to please: you become the rock and the hard place. Worst of all is the fear that you are wasting people’s time, the biggest no-no in my book. We don’t have an infinite amount of time so, as it’s precious, it should be looked after. Wasting someone else’s is unacceptable (just plain rude).
The fear of failure: that’s the one that has snuck in to my life now and found itself a prominent perch, and it’s going nowhere. Of course, that is what we do as humans – we fail – so I shouldn’t be surprised by it trying to take over. Sometimes we fail well, sometimes less so.
I am coming to terms with it as I head to my dotage. I tell myself to breathe deeply, calm those ageing nerves, cut myself some slack. As the saying has it, we should feel the fear, and do it anyway. Yes, failure is very much an option, so let’s all give it a go.
