Aging is timeless

There is no escape and that is ideal

Thoughts on getting older and older, happily

There is a much-quoted line to be used whenever someone whines about getting old: "and what's the alternative?"

In the first instance, the question itself is meant to stop the complaint and the insufferable verbal accolades that accompany it. As long as the moaner-in-chief is reasonably able-bodied and still in possession of mental faculties, complaining about old age is simply a bad habit.

The main reason for supporting such a harsh verdict is unambiguous: the alternative to growing old is dying young. A secondary reason is the infinite array of options, were humans to be granted the privilege of eternal youth.

When would someone stop the clock? At 18? At 21? Maybe at 30? And at which exact moment of the year, six months in or a birth date? An unanswerable question. It can be safely assumed that the end of the aging process cannot be a process itself, like 6 months of adjusting all the biological levers and drawing a line beyond which everything stays the same.

The history of fiction provides so many examples of toying with the idea of agelessness, or at least aging stopped in its tracks. Some, to quote just Dr Faustus and Dorian Gray, come with a moral story. Is it enough to scare away keen members of the anti-aging brigade? Apparently not, as the trend of extending lifespans and dreaming of more and more impressive longevity is rolling on.

The missing clue is the timeless character of aging. As it has always taken place, (since records began, to use a statistical phrase), it is not as such subject to the constraints of time measurement. It is a natural fact, not dissimilar to sunrise and sunset. No one in their right mind would think of stopping the sun from setting. Or would they?

The second argument is that it puts an end once and for all to the bane of everyday life, choice. It should be added as an added bonus for modernity, with its diabolical wheel of numberless selections to be made. Highly successful for clever marketing, a disaster for personal life. Aging is one unavoidable certainty. It gives a direction of travel and the coordinates don't need a special tool, life has its own compass.

Once in possession of this inevitable truth, people could relax into making the concept of old age totally obsolete. When treated as a chunk of personal history, neither good or bad, wrinkles, slowness of gait and memory deficiencies lose their dark gloss. True, remembering becomes another form of athletic exercise, but is it worse than young age's enormous mental reservoir,left mostly empty, as only a few topics would inhabit full awareness?

Moving fast is an advantage, learning fast even more so. The hard part comes with knowing when to slow down movement and when to turn assimilation into creation. That comes with aging, except wonder kids, who are not a regular occurrence.

No one is secretly wishing for wake-up calls to reality that come in the form of sudden illness or loss. A lot of people who experience them talk about personal transformation and a new take on life. The arrival of old age, quietly, softly, imperceptibly up to a certain point, is the most gentle of all life landings. It is to be embraced as a chance to look back, look forward and then stop thinking about it.