When I turned 60, it didn't bother me at all.

The freedom of finally becoming yourself

There's something quietly radical about not minding getting older. We're so conditioned to treat birthdays as minor crises after 30 that we forget aging is actually just what happens when you're doing life right—accumulating time, experience, and (hopefully) the wisdom to stop performing for people who don't matter.

The thing Yoko Ono's comment hints at is that despair about aging often comes from still measuring yourself by someone else's timeline. If you've spent your 20s and 40s and 50s actually building something real—whether that's work you care about, relationships that feed you, or just a clearer sense of who you are—then the number itself becomes almost irrelevant. You're not losing potential anymore; you're finally using the potential you already have.

Of course, it's easy to say this when you've made an extraordinary life. But the principle applies even in ordinary circumstances: the people who seem unbothered by aging aren't usually the ones who stopped trying at 35. They're the ones who never stopped becoming themselves. They have too much going on to panic about the calendar.