The Tyranny of Youth: Breaking Free from the Fear of Getting Old

Humanity has been reflecting on age and mortality for as long as it has known itself. In our earliest attempts to comprehend existence, what kind of gods did we invent? We created immortal and eternally young ones.

An Unchanging Ideal Through Time

Consider Ancient Egypt. The entire pantheon is depicted as fit, young, and immortal: Osiris, Ra, Bast. Even when they have the heads of animals, their bodies are human, and it’s clear from those bodies they aren't fifty. Move to Ancient Greece and Rome, and the ideal is the same, only with an added emphasis on beauty. In both cultures, you find a paternalistic, patriarchal figure like Zeus or Jupiter, but the rest of the pantheon could grace a modeling podium. The goddesses of love and beauty, Aphrodite for the Greeks and Venus for the Romans, are not "ripe berries again"; they are young, beautiful, and immortal maidens.

The masculine archetype follows suit. Who are the great myths written about? Zeus’s son, Heracles—or Hercules to the Romans—is a young, powerful, and handsome man. Even Hera, the wife of Zeus, is a maternal figure, but she isn't depicted as an older woman. This powerful, motherly archetype is portrayed as a woman of thirty at most. This ancient ideal is so ingrained that in the 2004 film Alexander, Angelina Jolie, then 28, played the mother of Alexander the Great, who was portrayed by Colin Farrell, an actor only one year her junior. The ancient canon does not permit even a mother figure to be fifty.

This pattern is universal. In Northern Europe, the central figures may be the Slavic Perun or the Scandinavian Odin, but their sons, Loki and Thor, are virile young men. The Valkyries are not seasoned matrons of war but beautiful maiden warriors. The Christian faith centers on a story that culminates when its central figure is just 33.

Even our modern myths follow this script. In the 20th century, Tolkien gave us eternally young and beautiful elves: Arwen, Galadriel, Legolas. In the 21st century, George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire gave us Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, who were merely teenagers at the start of their epic story, not unlike Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Has the world truly changed? Would this saga have captured the global imagination if its protagonists were fifty years old? Imagine Daenerys adjusting her shapewear before feeding her dragons, or Jon Snow running late for battle because of prostate issues. Who would be interested in that story? No one. The heroes of our grandest tales—of love, achievement, and discovery—are almost always young and beautiful. This has been the case throughout recorded history, and it likely always will be.

The Great Neurosis of Our Time

From this deep-seated cultural script—the belief that love, development, and heroism belong only to the young—our greatest collective neurosis is born. With the loss of youth, we fear we lose our right to these fundamental human experiences. Our advancing age seems to be in direct conflict with everything beautiful and desirable in the world.

We begin to believe that all that lies ahead is a boring, gray existence of simply living out our days, perhaps vicariously through our children or by watching stories about young people on a screen. It feels as if we are being forced to leave the game. The realization hits that the butterflies in your stomach, the thrill of achievement, are all in the past. An actor who once played the hero-lover is now cast as the supportive father nodding on the couch. A woman who played the ingenue is now cast as the main character's mother. This shift from a leading role to a supporting one can be incredibly difficult, often plunging a person into crisis.

Many fall into a hysterical denial of age. A man of 45 or 50 buys a motorcycle and a tight t-shirt, seeking out the company of twenty-year-old students, all while his body protests the charade. He races down the highway, his speed matching his blood pressure, silently screaming, "I'm not old." A woman might post photos of herself online, insisting, "I'm 50, but I look 30." But have you ever truly met a fifty-year-old who looks thirty in the clear light of day? I have seen many beautiful, well-cared-for fifty-year-olds. They look like a good fifty. Taking care of yourself is important, but why the hysterical denial? What is so terrible about accepting the age you are?

Challenging the Illusion

Is this neurosis—this fear that age robs us of love, achievement, and happiness—actually real? Why, then, are there so many unloved and unhappy 25-year-olds?

Age does not take away our capacity to love. We retain the ability to fall in love, to be loved, and to love another throughout our entire lives. A couple at 45 may not have the same love story as teenagers on a ship, but their love can be just as harmonious, passionate, or both. The same is true for achievement. I’ve spoken with people around forty who feel stuck in a career they don't love, asking for help to accept that their path is set. But why must they accept it? With modern life expectancy, a person at 40 has decades of active life ahead.

If you decide at 40 that you want to change your profession, even if it requires five years of new education, you will be 45 when you graduate. You would still have twenty years of practice in your new field before a traditional retirement age. You have more time ahead in your new career than the time you've already spent in your old one. Your age does not take away your ability to achieve or change your life. It is more difficult to learn as we get older, our brains are less flexible, but it is far from impossible. People do it all the time.

A Sober Perspective on Life's Arc

Is it necessary to be so afraid of age? If you want to love and be loved, then love and be loved. Who is stopping you? If you want to achieve something new, then go achieve it. 40 and 50 are not the end. You have more years of life and work ahead than you might think.

This brings me to two final thoughts.

1. First, the knowledge that we are aging should impress upon us an obligation to live our youth fully. This gift is given to all of us, and it shouldn't be wasted on a job we don't love or on people we don’t love. It must be used wisely.
2. Second, do not dramatize your increasing age more than the situation requires. There is no need to plunge into the neurosis that insists it's all over, that only a slow, boring decline remains. Age makes its adjustments, of course, but it does not determine your ability to love, to achieve, or to find your path. Just as it is pointless to dramatize age, it is equally pointless to deny it.

I wish for you to accept and love the path you have already traveled, and to look forward to the road ahead with interest.

References

• Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. Free Press, 1973.
  This Pulitzer Prize-winning work explores how human culture is built upon the foundational, and often unconscious, fear of death. Becker argues that much of human activity is designed to overcome our mortality, which connects directly to the article's discussion of humanity's obsession with immortal gods, youthful heroes, and the cultural "neurosis" that arises from the fear of aging and losing one's significance.
• Sheehy, Gail. Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. E. P. Dutton, 1976.
  Sheehy's groundbreaking book identifies distinct developmental stages and predictable crises that adults face from their twenties through their fifties and beyond. It validates the article's point that feeling lost or desiring change around age 40 is a normal and predictable part of life, not an end point. Sheehy reframes these periods as opportunities for growth and reinvention, arguing against the idea that life's potential for achievement and happiness diminishes with age.
• Friedan, Betty. The Fountain of Age. Simon & Schuster, 1993.
  In this work, Friedan confronts the myths and negative stereotypes associated with aging in Western society. She argues for a new, more positive paradigm of later life, one focused on continued growth, experience, and wisdom. This directly supports the article's concluding call to accept and embrace aging rather than denying or dramatizing it, showing that love and achievement are not exclusive to youth.