So the main thrust of this op-ed is that when you get old, you're allowed to settle comfortably into your routines.<p>Those people you've been avoiding? Keep on avoiding them. Kids playing shitty new music that sounds more like a cat being dragged across a cheese grater than the dulcet tones of a young lover? Don't listen to it. Friends going up to Scotland for the weekend to view, and maybe participate in, some improv? Fuck em; stay home and watch <i>The Great British Baking Show</i> again.<p>Which is all fine, but there's nothing intrinsic about aging that allows you to do those things, or about being young that makes those things impossible.<p>There are good things about getting older. I'm with the person I love, and I don't have to figure out how to hack Tinder in a desperate attempt to get laid. I'm making more money now than I ever have. I know, more or less, who I am and what I want to do.<p>But I'm also closer to losing all of those things, every day. <i>That's</i> what aging is, and that's why we react so viscerally against it.<p>I used to be an athlete. Now, I have arthritis in my knees and shoulders, and my physical prowess is on a slow but inevitable decline. I make plenty of money, but that comes with significantly more responsibility, and the constant worry that I'm getting too old to be taken seriously as an engineer. I know who I am and what I want to do, but I worry that, despite all of the good choices I've made, I'll never be able to actually retire and do those things.<p><i>That's</i> aging. I've been telling people I don't want to go to some shitty rock concert for decades. I didn't need to turn forty to feel that it was allowed.