Facing

I didn’t expect my birthday post about talking to your 80 year-old self to create quite such a reaction. I’ve had so many conversations with people about it since, both in real life and online. One of the things that surprised me most was people telling me what a viscerally emotional reaction they experienced when they tried to reside in their 80 year-old self. Quite a few said that they couldn’t face the photo-ageing task and yet when I asked why, I found they struggled to get to the bottom of it. In the end though it seems to be about fears that fall into two spheres.

One is the reality of seeing that your still vibrant mind will be residing in an old face and an old body, it’s about the physicality of it. The other is that seeing your older self forces an acknowledgement of reaching what will be the final lifestage, knowing that the closing down of your life is imminent – and by that I don’t mean death (although that’s inevitable), I mean the acceptance of the fact that you’ve probably done the most extraordinary things that you’re likely to do, from this point life will be more everyday.

And the thing is that although it feels uncomfortable to confront both of these realities, that’s exactly why it’s worth doing the exercise now while we’re still in midlife. If we can start coming to terms with ageing now, we’ll move through the years ahead with more ease and confidence. If we can become familiar with our ageing face ahead of time then we’ll avoid that cycle of looking in the mirror and feeling disappointed, it will be a more positive feeling of ‘ah hello, there you are, I knew you were coming’.

So let’s imagine you’re looking at your older face, I don’t think it’s going to be instantly easy for anyone. I tested quite a few different photos in the app and it was easy to see how when I was carrying more weight for example or I was tired, I looked more jaded than the photo I added to the post when I was feeling fit and healthy after Colombia so it’s worth spending time on finding a photo of yourself that you like. The upside of seeing less positive aspects of my 80 year-old self was that it was a bit of an ageing crystal ball and it gave me the impetus I needed to sign up for another year on my gym programme and continue focusing on nutrition. If you don’t like what you see beyond the wrinkles (there isn’t an easy way to avoid those), it’s worth asking yourself a few questions. What does it tell you about the way you’re ageing physically? Does it say that you need to start living more healthily now? Is it as simple as needing to wear SPF every day? Is now the time when you really need to start a steady exercise regime? Do you need to think harder about what you eat and drink? One of my friends told me that she’d decided it was time to think about cutting her long hair and finding a shorter style that suits her, it had been on her mind for a while but the 80-year old photo focused her because she felt her long hair wasn’t going to age well.

We have to accept that our faces are going to age, that we’re never again going to look as young as we do today. If you’re someone who’s always had great physical beauty then it must be so much harder but it’s a better option than the alternative which is, of course, not living to that age and missing out on all of the great times that lie between now and then. I don’t know whether it makes it easier or harder that I have my photo taken so often but it means I’m very in touch with the fact that I’m ageing. I think I’ve already said that over the last twelve months I’ve noticed my skin and body ageing faster than I ever have before. I look at my face now and see a slightly crumpled paper bag version, not the smooth one that it was until very recently. I read an interview with the journalist Christa D’Souza this week where she said that the ages between 59 and 64 were when she felt she transitioned from youthful-looking midlifer to older woman. It’s going to happen to us all.

Of course there are some choices. I find myself lingering wistfully over articles about things like blephoroplasty eye lifts until I see the starting from £6,500 price tag and think about the adventures that amount of money could buy instead. And if you start down that path I wonder where you’d stop. If you had your eyes lifted would you then notice your jowls more… or your neck… and there’s nothing you can do about your hands. The thing is that even though you might look younger, you’d still be the same you inside at the end of it.

I’ve had a telling lesson that small tweaks to physical appearance don’t make the enormous difference you imagine they will recently. Ever since I lost a lot of weight back in 2013 and reached the point where I couldn’t bear to live on a diet any longer, I’ve harboured a nagging conviction around how different I’d feel if I’d just pushed myself to go half a stone lighter. And then when we got back from the intensive salsa course in Colombia in February, I found I had. And have I turned into the new and improved woman that I always thought the half a stone down would bring? Not at all, I don’t feel any different – other than knowing it’s better for my BMI my life hasn’t changed one bit… and my favourite Me+Em jeans don’t flipping well fit anywhere near as well as they did!

We’re all ageing every day and I think it’s worth facing up to it purely so that you can come to terms with it kindly. Imagine being that 80 year-old woman looking back at herself and realising too late how much of her life she’d tainted by not accepting how she looked. However vibrant and confident she is at 80, she’s going to feel exasperated. And I bet if you gave her the chance to look exactly as she does right now in 2025 she’d jump at the chance. There’s a balance to be found between controlling what we can by making the very best of what we have and accepting what we can’t change by coming to terms with who we are. So many of us tarnish our lives by wishing that we looked different to the way we do. As we start to age more visibly it’s time to let that go, to finally be ‘bien dans nos peaux.’

Once again let’s accept that we’re all going to be old… if we’re lucky. When you chat to her that 80 year-old woman is going to remind you that the time you have between now and then is finite so it’s better to spend it strategically than let it seep away. As always, strategy involves breaking things down into workable chunks. It was when I sat down with my pension adviser last year that I was really forced to think about it because he asked me, ‘how much money are you going to need in retirement?’ I should probably have been able to have answer him without too much trouble but the thing is that having worked for myself since 2001 I’ve never had a fixed income so I didn’t have the first idea. He then suggested we work it out according to how I was planning to spend my time – how much travelling I’d be doing, how often I’d want a new car, how many times a week I’d want to go out for coffee… and my mind was blown. I just haven’t thought ahead like that yet, he may as well have asked me how many times I’m planning to pop to the moon.

However, the useful thing that I’ve kept in mind from that meeting was that he pulled out charts and graphs (I’m a sucker for models and statistics) and explained the U shaped curve. That is that you need more money in the early days of drawing your pension (for fun mostly – and overdue house repairs) but also at the end, for care. He explained that it’s tri-phasic, divided between what he called the ‘active, passive and supported’ years which all sounded very depressing. But then a little while ago in the comments our much loved Mary Katherine rebranded them as our ‘go-go, slow-go and no-go’ years which feels so much better.

So, let’s imagine that we’re sitting with our 80 year-old picture in front of us. She’ll probably be crossing the bridge to the no-go years so we need to make sure that she’s filled the go-go and slow-gos with everything she wanted to do. When you look at it from that perspective you may realise that the opportunity timeframe is smaller than you’d thought. It’s easy to think that we have at least X years until we die but actually not all of those will be fully active. And so once again that’s why having the picture of that woman in your mind is useful. You need to hold her to your heart and make sure she’s looking back, nodding (and hopefully chuckling too) at everything she did. It’s so much easier if you make friends with her now and care about her dreams.

I’m going to leave it at that but those of you who told me you were sticking your heads in the sand be warned, I’m going to ask you again when I next talk to you… you know who you are. We can resist ageing or we can embrace it, it’s going to happen anyway to those of us who are lucky enough to stick around. The choice is ours but it makes much more sense to surf the wave ahead than splutter our way through it. And planning for go-go could be a really fun project.