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Comedian Robin Ince was interviewed by Andrew Copson during a recent episode of the What I Believe podcast. He said that when he was in his twenties his fellow comedian Jo Brand told him that "you can’t really be a stand-up comedian until you are 30 because you don’t really know who you are." Robin said that he didn't take this statement very well when he was younger, but now that he is a middle-aged man he understands perfectly what Jo Brand meant. I agree, and I think that this is true for so many other things in life. My 20-year-old self, or even my 30-year-old self, had no idea of his place in the world. I felt lost and full of self-doubt and self-hatred until I was 40, and it took me living in 6 countries and working for more than 20 years in two very different industries to understand who I am and to know the role that I want to have in my community. I count myself as one of the lucky ones who got to understand this at such an early age. For some people, it takes longer.
We live in a world that sometimes feels like the upside-down world. We worship youth and try to slow the ageing process by all means, as if ageing was not inevitable or as if it were something bad. For sure, it must be linked to a fear of death which is often associated with older people but the reality is that we can die at any age and those who get to live to be old are actually the privilege ones. I for one have always wanted to be old. Perhaps because I was so unhappy when I was young and hoped that happiness would come with ageing. Or perhaps because I admired my grandfather so much and I always thought of him as the most intelligent person on the planet.
As an artist, getting old can be both the best and the most daunting thing that could ever happen to you. With age comes experience, and this experience enriches the stories that we tell through our work. But, as you get older, you also enter into the longest phase in your artistic career. The mid-career artist phase, as they call it, which can sometimes span almost your entire lifetime. It is in this ageing process that you get to know yourself, that you understand your worldview better and that you grow, not only physically, but also as a creative.
Everything that you are doing today will be part of the building blocks on which you are creating your future self. Time is not wasted, no experience is wasted when it comes to shaping who you will one day become. If you've only been in the world for a couple of decades and you feel like your work has no deeper meaning, that you have nothing to say, don't despair. That only means that you just have to live a couple of decades more. That is not to say that a young person's point of view of the world is not valid, but we can't expect to look at a 20-year-old's portfolio with the same eyes that we look at a 40-year-old's one. Both points of view are equally important but are infinitely different.
This is also not to say that anyone who has been on the world for more than 40 years has a fulfilled life and knows themselves well. But, 40 uneventful years do not equal 20 years filled with exciting adventures. For with age also comes maturity.
Dismissing someone because you consider them old is an act of self-sabotage. Before you know it, you will get to their age and you will have set an example for others to treat you the same way. We should aspire to grow older, to live more experiences and become wiser.
Avoid searching for the fountain of the eternal youth in order to live forever. Instead, grow as a human being into the skin that you inhabit with the urgency of knowing that time is running out and this is the only life we'll ever live. Maybe then, you'll start to see your work in a different light and you will be able to give your work and your life your own meaning.
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