Aging: Substance Over Time

August 14, 2025

I’ve been thinking about aging lately—not in the way most people do, with resignation and fear, but with curiosity and defiance. There’s something fascinating about the arbitrary nature of chronological age versus the malleable reality of biological age.

The Numbers Game

Age is just a number, but which number are we really talking about? I can influence my epigenetic age, and honestly, I don’t care much about my chronological age anymore. It’s like separating time from substance—what matters isn’t how many years you’ve accumulated, but how much life you’ve actually lived within those years.

Looking at Forbes lists organized by age tells an interesting story. Some people accomplish more in their twenties than others do in decades. Meanwhile, I sometimes feel like I’m late to the party, watching younger people achieve success while I’m still figuring things out. But maybe that’s the wrong lens entirely.

The Healthspan Question

This isn’t really about life extension—it’s about youth extension. Longevity means more life and a longer healthspan. Who doesn’t want to be healthy? The goal isn’t necessarily to live forever, but to make death optional while we’re working on the project of being fully alive.

Imagine being like Aragorn: 80+ years old but young in body, carrying the wisdom of age and experience. There’s something vampiric about this idea—the accumulation of knowledge and perspective without the physical decay. Maybe that’s why the archetype is so compelling.

The Competence Curve

Here’s a good argument for the “don’t die” approach: humans take an incredibly long time to ramp up in competence. Just as my life gets better at compiling experiences into wisdom, why cut it short? It seems wasteful to spend decades learning how to live, only to have the body fail right when you’re getting good at it.

Those close to death fear little—there’s a freedom that comes with age, a gradual caring less about what others think. But there are also tradeoffs. Just because someone is old doesn’t automatically make them wise. Age brings vulnerability alongside strength, both physical fragility and existential resilience.

The Bigger Picture

In 200 years, there’ll be a whole new set of people roaming this earth. That’s both sobering and liberating. It makes me think about what really matters—not the accumulation of years, but the substance packed within them.

Maybe as we get older and see ourselves in other older people, they become more malleable in our eyes. We start asking, “Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you change?” Perhaps we project our own unrealized potential onto them, seeing possibilities where they see limitations.

The Release Valve

Sports serve as a release valve for testosterone, aggression, and violence—channeling destructive energy into constructive competition. Maybe thinking about aging needs a similar outlet. Instead of letting the fear of time passing consume us, we can redirect that energy into optimizing the time we have.

Quality Over Quantity

The question isn’t just how long we live, but how much of that time constitutes actual living. Better people, better philosophy, better use of the years we’re given. The elderly can be both physically vulnerable and mentally formidable—it’s a paradox worth embracing rather than fearing.

In the end, it comes down to this: substance, not time. The goal isn’t to collect years like trophies, but to make each year count. Whether that’s through better health, deeper relationships, meaningful work, or simply the wisdom to know what matters and what doesn’t.

The aging game isn’t about winning or losing—it’s about playing it well, for as long as we possibly can.