There is a moment, somewhere in the middle years, when you hear yourself say it.

I’m gettin’ too old to do that.

It comes out quiet, almost courteous, the way someone excuses themselves from a conversation they are still listening to. But tucked inside those words is a small surrender, the kind that happens before anyone else notices. A door that you close from the inside.

Age can make you broader. Age can make you smaller. Both are possible. Both are waiting.

I have spent my life working in ways that do not always look like work. Some of it happened in studios, in rooms full of wires and microphones and people trying their best to make something that mattered. Some of it was tuning old machines that had their own moods. Some of it was building systems that now live on servers in cold rooms I never physically see anymore. Some of it was running trails, raising children, or keeping a farm from slipping back into the forest that never stops reaching for it.

All of it has been labor, and not the kind anyone would confuse with hustle. It is the kind of work that teaches you your size in the world. The kind of work that reminds you there is always something bigger than you, something that needs your attention and your hands…and often your heart. A lot of people could use that kind of work these days.

Music taught me that effort is not always loud. Recording taught me that listening is work in its own right. I spent years in rooms leaning into the hiss of tape and the hum of amplifiers, making small adjustments for hours. You learn to stay present when no one else can hear what you hear. That kind of attention becomes a craft. It becomes a discipline. It becomes a way of being in the world.

None of this work ever asked how old I was. It asked for presence. It asked for patience. It asked for the willingness to show up again and again until the thing became itself.

Age has not taken that from me. If anything, it has sharpened it. Getting older is not the problem. Forgetting your place in the work is.

Years ago, I watched a short documentary called The Hard Way on PBS and it has stuck with me ever since. I rewatch it when I’m on the downward slope of “the stoke” over the course of the year when trail running. A man named Bob Hayes is at the center of the doc. You watch him long enough and you realize you are in the presence of someone who never left his post.

Here is the film if you want to see for yourself:

Bob is near 90 years old during the shooting of this. Yet there he is, splitting wood in the frozen days, tending his farm, connecting with his community, and running up mountains. He moves without complaint. He has no interest in appearing younger. He is committed to the life that shaped him. The one where instead of sleeping in the comfort of his own bed the night before a race, he’s on a cot near the starting line under the stars.

Bob works because it keeps him in the world. Because the land would miss him if he stopped. Because a life without usefulness is a kind of long funeral.

Watching him, I feel something like recognition! Not in the scale of his days, but in the way he refuses to withdraw. He meets age the way he meets winter or a 100 miles run. He steps toward it.

Comfort has a way of convincing you that you have done enough for now. Rest turns into retreat. Ease becomes a kind of hiding. You start imagining yourself as fragile before anyone else does. Don’t do that!

This is how people shrink. Not through illness. Through permission.

And the work changes too.
The body shifts. Your goddamned knees and hips speak up loudly. The back writes its own small warnings when you crawl into or out of bed. The hills you once ran without thinking now ask for your breath and quads in a new way.

It would be easy to bow out.
To say the trail is for younger legs, that the distance is too much, that your pace is not what it used to be.

If I say I am too old to do that, I am usually protecting myself from the awkwardness of meeting my body as it is now, not as it was. Age is not the enemy. Becoming brittle is.

One of the quiet places where I’m gettin’ too old to do that shows up is in the work of being available. Not the heavy lifting, not the long runs, not the physical jobs that clearly get harder with age. I’m talking about the small, steady responsibilities that hold a community together. The everyday ways we show up for other people.

It is easy to let yourself believe that those things belong to younger folks. Let the neighbors deal with it. Let someone else check in on the person who is struggling. Let someone with more energy take the call. Before long, availability starts to feel optional. Then burdensome. Then something you quietly age out of.

But that is one of the traps of growing older in this dominant culture. We start mistaking withdrawal for wisdom. We start talking ourselves out of being useful. We start imagining that our presence is no longer needed, or that being tired is reason enough to turn inward.

For me, I’m gettin’ too old to do that usually shows up in the form of hesitation. The little pause before saying yes (or no). The thought that someone else will handle it. The feeling that I’ve done enough. But when I follow that path, I can feel something in me getting smaller. Not older. Smaller.

Being available is about willingness. It is about being someone your people can rely on, even when you are not at your strongest. Eldership is not built on youth or speed. It is built on steadiness. The ability do the important work of your time and not be siezed up by living heartbroken at times!

Age is not what gets in the way of that. Unwillingness is.
And if I give in to that, then I’m gettin’ too old to do that becomes a story I tell to excuse my absence, instead of a lie I refuse to live by.

I have seen people age in two directions. One direction is marked by the quiet arrival of I’m gettin’ too old to do that. It starts as a practical thought, then becomes a habit, and eventually a posture. These people turn inward. Their world shrinks to the things that ask the least of them. Their responsibilities lighten, not because life requires it, but because they slowly step away from them. The days get quieter in a way that feels more like pulling back than settling in.

The other direction looks different. These are the people who grow wider as they age. They stay involved. They stay curious. They keep saying yes when it would be easier to say no. They do not use age as a way out of participation. They let it deepen their place in the world. Their years become something they carry with a kind of steadiness, not something they hide behind.

The difference between the two has very little to do with how strong someone feels. It has everything to do with how willing they are to remain in their own life. How they respond when the thought I’m gettin’ too old to do that shows up at the door. Whether they agree with it, or whether they push back and keep going.

Bob Hayes pushed back. He widened. He kept moving because motion made sense to him. He kept tending the work that shaped him. He kept showing up for the land, for the running community, and for the life he had built. He did not step out of the stream of things just because the years added up.

He shows that elderhood is not something you age into automatically. It is something you practice. It is a way of living that keeps you connected, useful, and available long after the world expects you to slow down.

So the question for me is not whether I am too old to do that.
The real question is what I choose to do with the years in front of me, and what kind of elder I’m becoming as I go.

I want to be someone who steps in rather than steps back.
Someone who keeps learning, even if I have to take my time with it.
Someone who still rides the old bikes because they keep a part of me awake.
Someone who still runs, even if the pace has changed.
Someone who lifts what needs lifting when the moment calls for it.
Someone my people can reach without apology.

And somewhere in that, I can hear a different sentence forming.
Not I’m gettin’ too old to do that, but This is still mine to do.

Not as a denial of age, but as a refusal to let age decide the shape of my days.
A small declaration that I am still here, still useful, still willing.

Age can make a person withdraw, or it can anchor them more firmly in their place.
One path closes the door and waits for the world to pass by.
The other keeps the door open and meets whatever arrives with both feet on the ground.

I know which one I want.

If Bob Hayes left anything behind for the rest of us, it is the reminder that age does not ask for surrender. It asks for honesty. It asks for steadiness. It asks for the kind of effort that fits the season you are in, not the one you miss or wish you still had. And most of all, it asks for presence. To still be part of the world around you. To still give something real of yourself to the people who count on you.

When I sit with that, the phrase I’m gettin’ too old to do that starts to shift. It stops sounding like a limit and starts sounding more like a moment worth noticing. A place where I might be pulling back out of habit, or fear, or a tired story I have carried without thinking. It becomes a reminder to stay with the work that keeps me human, the work that ties me to other people instead of isolating me.

I am not trying to hold on to youth. Youth had its season, and I lived it. What I want now is something steadier and more rooted. I want to age in a way that feels honest to who I am becoming. I want to stay useful. I want to keep showing up in ways that matter, even if those ways look different than they used to. And I want the people in my life to feel that I am still here with them, not drifting toward the edges.

If that is the work in front of me, then I’m gettin’ too old to do that loses its power. I am not too old. I am simply on the next stretch of the trail, moving at the pace that fits. And for where I am now, just as Bob was in his time, I’m right on time.

Bob Hayes – December 31, 1926 — May 14, 2018
https://www.gardencityfh.com/obituaries/robert-hayes