I tend to ruminate about age, mostly because it’s a thing that seems to be happening, not just to me but to other people as well.

This morning, I was reading about Lionel Messi, who at almost 39 is in his sixth World Cup, and about Serena Williams, who at 44 is playing doubles at Wimbledon and also (at the last minute) competing solo. Both of them are considered old to be competing. I remember being that old. I’m thirty years older than Serena Williams.

I’ve been athletic all my life, but I really only got serious about competition when I turned 40 and took up fencing. Because 40 is young. I could still beat young people well into my sixties. My last competition was an over-40, when I was 70, and I won it.

I gave up fencing not because I was too old, but because it was getting boring and because I gave up my car.

I worked for a long time in a private boys’ school. I saw first-hand how men worship the boys they used to be, and how they can build their lives around paying close attention to young people during those intense years of potential from high school through college. I saw first-hand how women built their careers to dizzying heights and then gave a lot of it up to pursue the cultivation of their children.

It’s understandable; we are warm-blooded animals and our young take a long time to reach maturity. But maturity should be the start of things, not the end of it.

Our lives do not end. We keep changing. We keep growing. At least we do if we accept change. If we embrace change. And if we don’t worship youth.

As the gentleman being carried to the plague cart in the Monty Python sketch put it, “I’m not dead.”