We chase old age.

It might not feel so, to the young, but we chase old age. It is a target that moves further away the closer you get. Old? Not me. Even though as a child, being thirty was enough to qualify as old, suddenly nearing sixty seems inadequate to the definition.

There are some milestones along the way. Parents dying is strangely more ageing than birthing children. The latter makes you tired. The former makes you mortal. Perhaps the problem with all of the healthy living advice is simply that no twenty year old can ever believe that they will die. Not might die. Will die. Life is a zero sum game, after all.

And so on to sixty years of age.

The body aches but still manages to run and jump albeit with a longer recovery time. The mind is still sharp even though it holds so much more than my twenty year old self, most of it not about myself. Sometimes I wonder at the freedom of my younger self, to worry only about my needs, my own interests. None of these other people to concern myself with, neither the ageing partner nor the bright young adults; one negotiating the challenges of infirmity the other still making places for themselves in this world.

Now constrained not by money but by too many ties to other people and their care to actually let rip, to leave and head off on adventures.

We chase old age. It is ever out of reach. Until suddenly it isn’t.