Age is a Verb

Experience takes time

© Blair Speed 2025

Age is a noun. It is also a verb. If you are alive you are aging, and perhaps not in the sense of good cheese or wine. Some mellow, some ripen, but many resist the process, or pretend that their current condition is better than it was when they were younger. In specific cases or activities this may well be true; the knowledge and experience accumulated through the process of aging informs more intelligent, and efficient behavior. Such experience is very advantageous but it takes time, measured in decades, to earn and to integrate so its benefits must be expressed by means of declining physical aptitude or resources. The young man may be hard but he doesn’t know shit. The old guy knows and understands more but can’t apply it like he could have when he was young and strong. There was a sweet spot where peak physical capacity overlapped with increasing knowledge and experience and those who recognized it stretched that moment until the elastic snapped. It couldn't last.