Don't Forget, You're Gonna Die!

And other ways to feel better about getting older.

- Dan Harris

MY WIFE proudly flashed her phone in my direction the other day to show off a picture she’d recently taken of me holding our young son in a swimming pool. I promptly grabbed the device and used my fingers to zoom in on my belly, whose size and general flabbiness I have been loudly and repeatedly bemoaning of late. “I knew you were going to do that,” she tsk’d.

She thinks I am being ridiculous about my gut – and she has a point. By any measure, I am slim. I eat reasonably carefully and work out at least six times a week. Yet I miss the visible ab muscles I had in my 30s. I miss more than that, actually. Now in my mid-40s (wait, is 47 my late 40s?), I notice that I am increasingly criticising myself for looking old and bedraggled. So why, considering this noxious little stew of narcissism and body dysmorphia, would you listen to me about aging gracefully? Because while I do perseverate about this stuff, the amount of worry – and the way in which that affects my behaviour – has improved dramatically. Here’s a comparison.

About 10 years ago, I was in the throes of a balding crisis, an omnidirectional freak-out that bled into every area of my life.