In the world of sports, youth is the norm. A 30-year-old pro athlete is already thinking about retirement. What does that say about the rest of us—all of us who love sports and are 10, 20, or even 30 years older?
Category: The Aging Athlete
Over the past few weeks or months, I’ve sensed a shift. Without warning, I’ve slipped into the very vague category of “aging athletes” without really knowing what that means. I gave myself this label, perhaps because I noticed a noticeable change in my ability to recover from physical exertion and in how my body feels when I wake up. Perhaps I’ve also, for the first time, consciously felt the social—and more specifically, athletic—pressure to “stay young.” Here again, I find myself wondering. Why? Youth is certainly further removed, in theory, from our inevitable end—but is it happier? Can those in their fifties claim their own happiness, at least when it comes to sports?
Staying young: what are we to make of this imperative?
I feel that the pressure to appreciate one’s youth and resign oneself to old age is very strong. We’re supposed to be young “in our minds” and, for as long as possible, in our bodies. Aren’t we setting ourselves up for inevitable frustration by refusing to accept the passage of time and/or associating it with a particular way of being? And why should we start thinking about “aging well” only after a certain age, rather than from the moment we’re born, since life is nothing but a process of aging?
As you can see, the idea of “aging well” annoys me. It’s just one more thing to manage and succeed at. Yet with life experience comes a sense of ease—that feeling that appreciating the moment is far more important than managing some sort of “life capital.” As I’ve gotten older, I’ve actually stopped “managing.” Stopped managing my life and my well-being as if they were a small business that needs to be made productive, profitable, and efficient.
Living Well Rather Than Aging Well
So rather than aging well, I suggest living well—or simply living. To go with the flow of time, to stop struggling to freeze it in place. What a relief to enjoy sports for the sake of sports and to stop trying to impress our stopwatch. To get up with a body that’s a little rusty and ask ourselves: what movement, what exercise, what running pace could I choose to embrace myself just as I am?
Your fifties—or sooner, if you’re a bit wiser—is the time to stop measuring yourself against your Strava followers and, instead, to invite them to “join me” in a vision of performance that’s adapted to the passage of life. How fortunate we are to have this body, to discover new possibilities within it—admittedly different from those of our youth, but no less good or limited. Possibilities—that’s all there is to it. As long as movement is possible, there is life.