Growing Down, Not Up
As soon as we hit double digits, we want to grow up.
Now I’ve hit double sweet sixteen (32), I’m desperate to grow down.
George Oppen said, on aging, “What a strange thing to happen to a little boy.” I’ve seen that for myself. Grown men who, despite their gout, still live life as if they’re playing kiss chase on the playground. It goes one of two ways, either a solipsistic demeanour that discounts responsibility; or a youthful perspective that summons joy.
Older people talk about how they still feel young on the inside. I’ve always felt the opposite. In my youth I felt ancient. An oak tree masquerading as an acorn. I remember my maternal grandparents’ vitality so fondly that I’ve decided I must, from here on out, live the life of Benjamin Button. I want to act younger the older I get. My hair will recede and the lines in my face will deepen, but with each step away from the hellfire of my adolescence, the lighter the load becomes.
I wrote a piece for my nan, Brenda, on the day of her funeral six years ago. Discounting some minor errors, it’s one of my favourite things I’ve ever written.
“The blue bag of crafts at the bottom of her cupboard was a portal to another world. Over weeks and months, Brenda would keep a keen eye for bits and bobs that keen kids could use to create and transform structures, objects and ideas yet to be born. Her shopping bags would be used as nunchucks from time to time—if she decided so, that’s what they were. Simple as that. Sometimes she’d post herself up in a doorway, walking sticks in hand, and play football with me on the opposite side of the room.”
Brenda was testament to the notion “you’re only as young as you feel.” She wanted to bounce with her grandchildren just as passionately as they did, even when her body made that a painful and arduous task.
Brenda and her husband were exemplars of what it means to grow down. That is to say, as they aged they didn’t lose their verve. No matter how many bastards (literal and figurative) tried to dim their flame of frivolity, they sheltered the smoldering scarlet and understood it as the heat that kept them alive throughout the bite of the coldest days.
The Dickensian fuckery that took place in my younger years forced me to grow up quickly. My surviving grandmother once reminded me how she walked into the lounge—our makeshift hospice—and found me, aged 8, cutting up sponges to rehydrate my mom’s chemo cracked lips, cloaked in the gaunt hue of late-night QVC.
Nice one for un-repressing that memory, nan. Cheers.
I still went through the motions of building pillow forts and riding bikes in the park with my mates, but that kind of emotional gravity’s enough to force the most hopeful acorn to take root in the visceral reality of what life truly means.
As kids, you hear of someone being thirty and can’t even fathom the distance between them and your pubescent self. The older you get, the more people you meet, the more context you understand and the more variety you witness.
I met a near fifty year old mother of four who did enough MD one night to put Paul McCartney to shame, before heading straight to the Isle of Wight at 6am for a day trip with the family, her rogue decisions hidden behind a stunning pair of Gucci shades.
Shit, a 48 and 52 year old just dropped the album of the year—a survival flare for anyone who believes youth has a correlation to creativity or potential.
Bill Withers was making airplane toilets aged 32 when he wrote ‘Aint No Sunshine’. Samuel L Jackson was 40 when he filmed ‘Do The Right Thing’. Rothko was 43 when he painted his “colour field” masterpieces. Grandma Moses, admittedly a remarkable outlier, started painting at 78.
These examples illustrate that you don’t have to “get serious,” and drop your aspirations as you age. It’s a choice. A decision, one typically prompted by horror at the thought of retiring on a meagre pension. I won’t pander to the zeitgeist to join in on the “iF wE eVeR gEt To ReTiRe!” debate — and family history suggests I’d be lucky to make it that far — but as much as yeah, I have a mortgage and yeah, I have no fucking idea why people like Yeat, I’m encouraged to shake off the trappings that tend to be associated with age and carve my own path.
Just because I’m approaching my mid thirties doesn’t mean I need to have two-point-four kids, get a pair of new balance and start riding road bikes. That can be for them lot. All the best god bless. I’m fucking excited to see how I can dress when I’m older. You think I want a pension? I want a pair of concordes and an Arte Antwerp coord.
Aging’s kind of scary, but once you get over your half-life crisis, you come to terms with the fact it’s as inevitable as the TV license deciding you’re sucking the country dry.
“WE KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING THE ONE SHOW FOR FREE YOU DISGUSTING PIG,” - their letters. presumably.
Undoubtedly I’ll have a wobble and scream “IT’S ALL FINITE!” into the tar-black sky, but for now the process of aging (and, by extension, death) rolls like water off a reservoir manager’s back. I’m okay with it. Even if my Instagram ads are doing everything in their power to force me into believing that my widow’s peak is a character flaw, one that £30 per month ad infinitum will fix.
Bla bla bla, I’ve seen a lot of death. You get the gist. It’s actually way less climactic than you think. It’s more painful than you think, sure, but it’s the silence that’s deafening. You think of off/on as a light switch, not a person. Regardless, “the song is ended, but the melody lingers on.”
Staring into the cold faces of those you loved can be a turning point that catapults us into action or stasis. The more I reflect upon it, the more it encourages me to take things a little less seriously. To do what I want. Like really want. Even if that means the sole win for a Sunday is paying £26 for a luke-warm Pizza Hut and an hour labouring over a Substack draft.
Growing up presumably describes us getting taller as we age. That stops in our teens. After that, I suggest we all do our best to try to grow down. After all, that’s where we end… up.
Before Peterson turned into a complete nutjob caricature of everything he warned against, he taught me that responsibility is purpose. I don’t think that’s at odds with wanting to grow down. The more competent I become in myself, the more I understand that I can bear more liability and reap the concomitant rewards.
My niece is ten years old and I aspire to always be her ludicrous, goofy uncle. Even when my ankles grind to dust. My aspiration to grow down comes from peering behind Oz’s curtain and realising that most grown ups are simply scared people pulling levers, hoping nobody notices their true form. I’d much rather live transparently, pining for the future hopeful, naive days, those that eluded my youth, than force purpose from successive “smart” decisions taken for the sake of appearance.
We can balance the necessities of adulthood, the unfairness of capitalism and the inclination to live freely. I’ve seen it. I’ve hugged it. I miss them.
All that said, I do wonder what the perfect age to die is. Right now, I’d say like… 82. I reckon most of us peak at 75 as official old bastards. But I am going to need 7 years to binge the entirety of Taskmaster and Futurama. Again. So if I can’t really walk, or it hurts to breathe, or I shit myself when I cough, I reckon that’s long enough to finally watch Breaking Bad. Maybe then I’ll understand what the fuss was about.
Or die trying.
Yet another humdinger! <3