You're Too Old to Think You're Too Old to Learn: Why Making a Fool of Ourselves is the Secret to Success

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

Photo by Nourdine Diouane on Unsplash

So what do we do with ourselves when we’re ancients? Get to work looking silly again, that’s what

David picked me up from the airport last night, a kindly man easily in his mid-seventies, providing Lyft rides on a Friday night in Eugene.

He still has plenty of gas in the tank, as it were, if you will forgive the pun. He has a lot to say and it’s all worth listening to. Of course, you have to put your phone down first but I digress.

It beats the hell out of being velcroed to a couch watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show, working hard on your constipation.

At least your sphincter gets exercise, but I digress again.

David is busy, active, engaged, making dime and having fun. And he’s providing a service. He had to learn all the ropes which come with ride-shares, the technology that makes it all happen.

Initially, it was challenging, and he felt like a beginner. Made lots of embarrassing mistakes.

Bet you can relate.

Exactly.

My friend

Nurit Amichai

is a certification-stacked serious badass based in Haifa, a 75 yo real-life Wonder Woman who is working hard to help others maintain their sanity in Israel. She gives them a safe space to work out in her gym, work out their pain through her coaching, and focus on self-care while her entire country is under siege.

Her entire race is under siege, but I’m not going to discuss politics here. She is there for people who need help not just getting older but trying to keep it together after too many wars.

At each stage of her life, she had to start over. What she’s built now allows her the ability to help others not only keep going but if necessary, rebuild their worlds.

Nurit, from her website

What are you and I doing after the so-called retirement age rolls around? What are you and I doing to make a difference when an ageist society decides we’re ballast to be thrown overboard the moment grey pops at our temples?

In a world where society worships at the temple of youth, you and I get to focus on the temples of self-care, self-regard and self-development. Those are what give us the power to redirect, refocus and remake ourselves no matter what stage of life we’re facing, and no matter what life throws at us.

The older we are, the greater our responsibility to give back.

How are you and I, as we age past society’s due date (it’s inching down towards fifty, mark my words), going to stay relevant, mentally juicy and engaged?

How do you and I share what we’ve learned, the skills we’ve built and what wisdom we might have gained to go with the grey?

People like Nurit, whose personal history is full of the kinds of potholes and pain that would cripple a lesser person, can take those experiences and life lessons and sculpt them into a brand new career: today’s version of The Elder.

Much of what it takes to be an elder comes from the ability to start over endless times, to have the humility to screw up, to revisit the beginner inside.

My inner beginner is still trying to learn the hula-hoop, but that’s another story.

Photo by raza ali on Unsplash

In fact, in tribal societies, the elders have that very job: to provide the guidance, the wisdom, the tribal lore and storytelling which hold the society together. The elder’s role is to be that guide, while at the same time recognizing the inevitable shifts that new generations must face.

The core human skills never change: learning to cope, deal with loss and failure, death and dying, understanding that part of the price of life is pain, and that pain teaches us greater love and compassion as well as trust that there is indeed a path, even if we can’t see it.

Especially when we can’t see the path, which frankly, is most of us because we’re staring at our goddamned phones.

Being an elder is sacred work. Work that people under forty just aren’t ready to do, not quite yet. There are some very smart people under forty. Just not many of them wise. And therein lies the fundamental difference.

The road rash you and I carry on our bodies, our hearts and souls are what give us our power, our right to advise, and the life expertise from which to ask better questions.

When you get old enough, you realize that there really are no hard and fast answers.

There are plenty of questions. Wisdom teaches us to ask better ones rather than to scramble to offer an answer, when most of the time, there probably isn’t one.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

One of the best life lessons I ever got was to learn how to see my failures, foibles, faceplants and f*ckups as comedy material. Hell, there’s so much of it, I might as well.

George Bernard Shaw wrote:

“A man progresses in all things by making a fool of himself.”

By the time you and I hit fifty, sixty and beyond, if we’re lucky, we’ve spent a lifetime doing just that. I sure have.

Still am. Just read my stuff. I’m still making a fool of myself. It’s an art form.

Often, we’re learning something terribly important while we’re making ripe fools of ourselves. As kids, we don’t mind; the whole point is to fail forward.

Why on earth do we encourage tiny kids to screw up, but the second they’re playing soccer Daddy thinks little Timmy is suddenly David Beckham? Then if they screw up that says you’re an abject failure as a father?

It’s our idiot ego which prevents progression as we start obsessing about looking cool, which puts sudden and life-stultifying brakes on our growth and creativity.

If we’re smart, we grow out of the ego attachment to failure-avoidance. That may take a while. For me, it wasn’t until I was in my late fifties before I started to let go of trying to look cool, and started to delight in looking foolish.

I’ve raised that skill to a whole other level too, so it’s easy. Looking foolish, that is. Delighting in it, well, gimme a few more decades.

An elder understands that starting over involves a beginner’s mind, a beginner’s attitude, like a toddler learning to walk. Falls are part of it, failure guaranteed.

If you’re keen to learn how to get a handle on how to do this, there’s a great book I’m investigating right now which delves into that very thing:

Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning

I’ll go into more of this book in another article. For our purposes here, suffice it to say that Vanderbilt, a fifty-ish travel writer/journalist, was inspired by his very young daughter’s journey to learn chess.

This contrasted starkly with his not focusing on learning much of anything new. Like so many of us when we’re adults, we love to lean on our laurels, no matter how shaky they may be.

For anyone at life’s mid-point, this is a terrific ask:

What are you and I willing to risk so that we can be of value, as Vanderbilt wanted to be, to his daughter? What are we willing to learn, to expand who we are, to become something or someone new in order to be useful to ourselves and others?

Reading this book is giving me solid insight on the last twelve years of learning scads of new sports and immersing myself in new cultures. Both of these involved nearly daily mistakes, screw-ups, mishaps and accidents.

I’m learning that my willingness to be a ripe fool is what’s making me, well maybe, a bit wiser. Okay, so not so much so. But I am having fun.

You and I are Way Too Old to fear something new. We’re also Too Old to fear failure. We know it’s guaranteed.

At seventy, I meet too many folks who say

“I could never do that.”

You’re right, if that’s what you’ve already decided. Or, you can head out and take on a novel skill. Learn nautical knots, orienteering, the piano, how to sing, a new language.

Pick something that appeals.

Two seconds before I unraveled.

I tried aerial silks. Sucked at it. But it was fun right up to the point where I went SPLAT on the mat.

Be willing to fail repeatedly. That’s precisely what it looks like when you’re learning. You might just enjoy the journey.

The return to absolute zero competence in some different activity is part of what keeps us youthful and juicy.

Feeling old and stale? Learn to snowboard. Take up calligraphy. Makes no difference at all. Along the way you will meet new people, make new friends, expand your repertoire and maybe even find a brand-new career.

You could drive for Lyft, too, but that’s a little tame for my tastes. I’m more hard-core.

I’m thinking it’s time to take up shin-kicking.

That’s shin, not shit. To wit: You grab a pair of steel-toed boots or clogs, grab each other’s shoulders and kick the holy shit out of the other guy’s shins.

It’s said that the Brits (of course this is a British invention, they gave us seriously rich royals with lousy dental plans, right?) brought the sport to the USA.

I am not making this up.

Actually that explains a great many things about Americans.

You can harden your shins by beating on them with a hammer.

Right up my alley.

In my case, I’ll just kick my partner’s shins until my dentures fall out. My opponent will be caught so completely off-guard that I’ll kick him with my steel-toed clogs for a knockout punch.

Sounds like just the sport for me to add to my repertoire.

Shin-kicking at the Olimpicks. And no that wasn’t a typo. Google it. Wikipedia Commons.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with me today. I hope you were inspired to think and laugh a few times, but above all, to consider shaking your world up a bit. If you got value, kindly consider

If you know someone who has slowed down way too soon and could use inspiration, or a good kick in the shins, please also consider

Either way, you don’t get this time back. I’m delighted you spent it with me.