Age is Arbitrary

February 2, 2018

Have you heard? A 36-year-old just won the Australian Open.

That’s amazing.

Have you heard? A 40-year-old quarterback is about to play in his 8th Super Bowl.

That’s amazing.

Wait, why is it amazing?

Maybe the statistics?

According to one study done in 2009, the peak of a male tennis player’s career is in his “mid to late twenties.” And according to a more detailed study done two decades earlier, the peak age for a men’s tennis player is 24.

Considering Roger Federer is a decade older than both of those “peak” ages, and the fact that Federer is clearly still the best tennis player in the world, I guess that would qualify as amazing.

At the same time, the average NFL football player’s career is 3.3 years. After four years of college, 3.3 years would make a typical player about 26 years old. That means that an NFL player’s peak would come before 26.

Tom Brady is not only fourteen years older than the “peak” age, he’s still an elite player and will probably win the MVP this season. I guess you could call that amazing.

After all, we’ve never seen anything like this before.

But we know now that our minds control our bodies to a great degree. For example, if we think negatively, it makes us sick. Conversely, if we don’t think cynically, we stay healthy and live longer.

Whatever we think, our bodies create.

Last year Federer decided that his age was irrelevant. He was going to stay healthy and go for Majors. The result? He’s won three of the last four Grand Slams he’s played.

Brady decided, quite publicly, that his age meant nothing. He decided he was going to play well for at least five more years. This Sunday his team is favored in the Super Bowl (because of him) and he is the betting favorite to be Super Bowl MVP.

These “amazing” athletes decided not to listen to people or worry about statistics. They decided they would do something else.

Hmm.

What if we decided our bodies aren’t inferior just because we’re “getting old”?

What if we decided that it was possible to walk 3.47 million steps in a calendar year?

What if we decided that we were going to be knife-fighting, spear-fishing madmen at age 75?

And what if those things came true?

It makes me wonder.

Would it be amazing?

My book is called The Inevitability of Becoming Rich, and you can find that here.