In mid-March 2026 I turned 43 and as birthday greetings came in from family and friends, all the predictable jokes about getting on in life were made. During my primary school days, I remember thinking anybody over the age of 21 was ancient which, thinking on it now, seems like a harsh assessment!
But the idea of getting on in life has rarely troubled me, thanks to my grandfather’s response to my question on ageing once, “Well, growing older is better than the alternative!” But there’s no denying – for me, at least – that the time we have and the time we’ve spent comes into sharper view as it rolls on.
I’ve always tried my best to keep two things in mind as I get older: None of us gets our time back, and every generation complains about the one that comes after it.
Regarding the first point, I try to learn from my past, but I don’t dwell on regrets. I often tell friends it’s much easier to live with regrets than “what ifs”. We all have a finite amount of time and the gnawing sense of, “If only I had...” seems to me more painful than the regrets of having done something that didn’t work out.
Here, I’m reminded of the poem, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night (1951) by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. In it, the poet urges his dying father to resist death rather than accept it passively. To the rest of us, it’s a reminder not to shrink from important conversations, creative risks, or inconvenient truths. If something matters, we’re invited to lean fully into it.
A big question for each of us is to decide who and what really matters to us, and think about whether we give as much to those as we should. As many modern philosophers remind us, there will come a time when we do something for the last time (hold your child, play your favourite sport, have a conversation with a loved one) and we won’t know it. We can’t always be fully present for the important things, but being aware more often than not of what makes life worth living hopefully stops us taking too much for granted.
On the second point, I’ve caught myself a few times starting to say, “Back in my day...”, before stopping and giving myself a stern talking to. Since the time of Socrates, the same complaints have rolled on about young people.
From the Hull Daily Mail in 1925: “We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk, which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.” From The Falkirk Herald in 1951: “... many [young people] are so pampered nowadays that they had forgotten that there was such a thing as walking.”
Young people have always stumbled and fumbled their way through the world of their times, and I get the sneaking suspicion people complain about them, in part, due to the nostalgia they feel for the novelty of new encounters.
I’m also acutely aware that the world of my 20s is substantially different to the one current 20somethings live in. A student said of one of my favourite bands that it was “quite good in the olden days”.
The same student was also confused about why I used to go to all the trouble of going out to meet people on dates. “Didn’t you have apps to use back then?”
I rage against my dying to be right. Instead of starting, “Well, actually...”, I would respond, “No we didn’t – how is the world of dating apps?” This would open up a conversation in which the younger person might complain about the quality of dating life now, before going on to say it would’ve been much easier back in the day. To this I would have said no, no it would not. I’ve lost count of the number of sticky dance floors I staggered around with all the confidence of a newborn giraffe. It also didn’t help that I had way too much gel in the hair I had at the time, although valuable lessons were learnt on that score.
I try my best to remember that, while we all inhabit the same world, we all have different experiences of it, and a good conversation is better than a quick criticism in fostering understanding.
There’s plenty to admire about young people, and I don’t buy into the lazy trope of fragility, which every generation has been accused of. That said, I agree with my late mother on one thing. It feels better to be older.
There are no more dance floor excursions for me, for a start, which means no more dancing to Summer of ’69 looking like a Benny Hill tribute act. For the young people, Hill was a British comedian – Michael Jackson was apparently a huge fan of his, and we all know there’s no cooler music than Michael Jackson’s.
