You Are Way Too Old to Think You Can't Still Be a Serious Badass

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Adrian Dascal on Unsplash

On finding role models in the most wonderful of places..like right next door

Back in 2017, REI ran a national program called Force of Nature, which underscored the role of women in the wild. I’ve mentioned it before but it has a particular place here because their research indicated that most Millennials interviewed claimed they “had no role models.”

Honey, you ain’t looking hard enough. They are all over the place. Always have been.

Women of previous generations didn’t live with a smartphone recording every movement, bowel movement and hair movement all day every day. They just did what they did, often in long, heavy skirts, often abused harshly by society, their writings and scientific work dismissed until fairly recently.

They went into the wild, hiked places where it was forbidden, and did the kinds of things that today we claim we can’t possibly do without extreme gear and GPS systems.

For starters please see this about Alexandra David-Néel..

Those are the people who carved a path. And then before them, plenty more.

Photo by Sneha Cecil on Unsplash

Badassery has been around for a seriously long time. As in forever. Tribal women, Viking women, it has now been proven beyond a doubt, hunted, sailed, warred and explored just as hard, or better, well into old age, as their male counterparts.

Badassery is hardly a recent idea. Those who wrote history wrote out of history the stories of those who would put them to shame. As long as the researchers were White hetero Christian males, any form of serious agency or badassery by women, most especially women of color, got written off or put out of mind altogether.

Or referred to as barbarian, uneducated, and my favorite, pagan, the like, so that they can’t be taken seriously by educated White Christian males, who, natch, rule the world and always have, right?

But you can’t argue with archaeology. And with more women in the field, erasing gets harder to do.

Don’t get me started.

You and I are WAY Too Old to believe that we’re Too Old to rewrite history for ourselves and for those who come after us.

To be badass enough that for those whose lives we touch and people we mentor, life will never look the same.

It’s our job to be badass, just saying. With all the wailing and whining about HOW OLD I FEEL at thirty, the world needs to notice just how much badassery is already out there.

Photo by Brady Jordan on Unsplash

These days badassery is seen differently. The way people dress, or tattoo themselves, what they wear or ride or smoke. For some, it seems that the biggest part of badassery is rebellion, or some external badge as proof of character. While that has always been with us, social media put that on steroids. Appearances rule, rather than substance.

It smacks of superficiality, for true badassery takes hard work. Wearing purple hair is a fashion statement. Otherwise, it’s kinda meaningless, like how many piercings are on your body.

While I understand that’s one way to express yourself, I have different standards. Doesn’t make me right, but I have a take.

Badassery begins with breaking out of our boundaries

First and foremost I revel in women who actively defy the roles we are expected to live up to, and who define their own lives no matter what the cost.

I celebrate and elevate women who take on all kinds of experiences that are still not “typical” of women (who the hell ever determined that, right, and prevented men from being fully-realized, emotionally-competent caretakers?).

I also love to elevate men who choose to be different, remake themselves, and rise out of limiting roles society has forced them to endure. Above all I love telling stories about people who are aging vibrantly, which is THE badassery of all of them.

It is the one universally-shared adventure we all have, if we’re lucky, and one that too few are doing with gusto, style and substance even as some aspects of our agency are stripped from us like youthful eyesight, speed and agility.

In fact that’s part of what makes aging well so badass.

I am particularly chuffed when I stumble on fully-realized, multi-talented people, women most especially, who push boundaries in all directions.

Badassery, the way I see it. Used with permission

These folks are, of course, and always have been, all over the damned place.

They’re the little old lady (or man, thank you) on the treadmill at the Y. The quiet person sipping a Starbucks at the table next to you.

They are your next-door neighbors and folks behind you in church, if you go. Many of them are not terribly public. In fact, the so-called “influencers” (a word and industry I truly despise, as you can tell) suck all the air out of the room while the real badasses are just out there getting things done.

I have a few to share, just to make a point. This is for anyone who honestly believes that there are no role models out there. Puh-leeze.

This past week someone commented on an article of mine. As I always do, I took a look at her Substack profile. Here’s what I found:

Expat. Oceanographer and Earth observation scientist. Chief Operating Officer at Cognitive Space. Wild swimmer. Diver. Motorcyclist. Surfer. Skier. Artist. Meditator. Neuroscience and psychology nerd. Reader. Writer.

That would be

Hanna Steplewska

, who, as it turns out, lives right up I-5 from me in Seattle. We’ve connected- are you kidding? Turns out, just like me, she’s recovering from some of the same kinds of major body work which sidelined me for the last year.

You live hard, play hard, you injure hard. We pay for our play, but it’s bloody well worth it.

While she heals, she swims in the Pacific. Would you?

Look her up. Read her stuff. Ask me if that’s not a seriously badass person.

And while I’m particularly energized for those of us of a Certain Age, this from Serena Williams says it for me big time:

“The success of every woman should be the inspiration to another. We should raise each other up. Make sure you´re courageous: Be strong, be extremely kind, and above all, be humble.”

Every seriously badass person I ever met who was a TRUE badass was humble, outwardly-focused and intent on raising others up, committed to seeing the best in others.

That’s a true badass. Others’ accomplishments are further inspiration.

Photo by Oladimeji Odunsi on Unsplash Not my friend, representative photo

I met someone a few years ago, an immensely talented Black woman. An incest survivor, PhD, she’d written six books and bravely went public about her experience. She was also a fourth-degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do, a marathoner despite her asthma, and a bodybuilder.

Her writing is luminous and her work changes lives. She’s sixty-one and just beginning her goddesshood (sixty seems to be the threshold for most of us).

And just to be fair to the men out there, the other day I was out on the Central Oregon Coast. I’d pulled off the road at Cummins Creek trail, about to take a photo or two (and avail myself of a bush, thank you) when John came striding down the path.

John with a bush, for privacy (he was moving too fast for me to get permission)

A lean, thin Brit, John hikes at least forty miles at speed every week. In the space of a few minutes we found out that we’d both been to many of the world’s best hiking spots. He’s far better at it than I, certainly right now as I recover.

I may never be as good as he is. That delights me no end.

He’d lost his wife of many decades a while back but doesn’t let that slow him down. He doesn’t own a computer, or a cell phone. He’s too busy being outdoors and in life.

And he turns 85 this week. He didn’t even begin to really get into hiking until recently.

THAT IS BADASS.

I wonder how many of these people who are out doing interesting things, living their lives in such varied and engaging ways, walk by us every day unnoticed?

Our curiosity, our genuine interest in what makes others tick - and kindly if you and I have the conceit to be writers, that’s a key part of it- is a gift that keeps giving forever.

Why is this a superpower? Because being curious about others opens up the worlds of people out doing effing amazing things, stuff that blows our socks off, proving that anyone, anywhere, at any age, can go badass.

For me, badassery is carving out an exceptional life-however you define it, overcoming a disability, ending a terrible marriage, taking on a Big Hairy Ass Goal and achieving it, embracing a primal fear and doing it anyway…and then making a habit of it.

It’s addictive. Even better, the more you engage in badassery, the more you want to be surrounded by it, are never threatened by it, and encourage it in others.

My badassery? In the last twelve years I have kayaked the Arctic Ocean, ridden horses all over the world, white water kayaked and rafted, explored the Amazon, skydived, bungee-jumped and paraglided, flown airplanes and ultralights, cycled and ridden elephants and camels and donkeys in some of the world’s most remote spots, scuba dived the Sardine Run and the Great Barrier Reef, explored multiple continents and more than once came home on a gurney. For starters.

Nearly all of that after sixty.

Not to prove anything. Because it gave me untrammeled joy. And I am hardly done with it.

Are you over fifty? You’re just starting. Over sixty? Hell, still warming up. Past seventy? You’re in my territory and I am just now returning to my starting blocks. I’m back at the gym, on the horse, on the trail, hiking the dunes.

There is plenty of time for us to live a life full of serious badassery.

And the first step is slapping the Too Old trope right across the mug and get going. What gives you untrammeled joy?

See you in the fast lanes.

Let’s play.

Yeah, it’s dated. I’m on the far left, white helmet, blue jumpsuit.

Thanks kindly for hanging with me as we enter the first month of the New Year. I sincerely hope you are giving yourself permission to find your own personal badassery, to explore the joy of doing that thing you always wanted to do, be that person you always wanted to be. YES. There’s more time than you may realize.

If this inspired you, please consider

If you know someone in need of inspiration, please also consider

Either way I sincerely hope you do something marvelous this year.