I’ve been thinking about how we measure ourselves as we get older. There’s this unspoken assumption that relevance belongs to the young—that once you’ve hit a certain age, you’re gradually becoming less important, less necessary, less in the conversation. And I think it’s making us all a bit more anxious than we need to be.
When I was younger, I thought relevance meant being noticed. It meant your ideas mattering in rooms, your presence being felt, your name carrying weight. I spent a lot of energy trying to stay current, relevant, seen. And there’s nothing wrong with that hunger exactly—it’s just based on a pretty narrow definition of what it means to matter.
But I’ve noticed something else happening as I’ve gotten older. The things that make me feel most genuinely useful, most genuinely needed—they’re not the flashy ones. They’re the quiet ones. A friend calling because they know I’ll listen without jumping to fix things. A younger person asking for advice not because I’m famous but because they trust my judgment. The simple fact of showing up, consistently, as someone reliable. Not performing relevance. Just… being relevant.
There’s real grief in that shift, I’ll be honest. There’s something I had to mourn—that version of myself who believed relevance meant being at the center of things. Who thought mattering was about attention rather than depth. Some days I still feel that tug, that old hunger. It would be easier if I could tell you I’ve completely transcended it, but I haven’t.
What I’ve found instead is something quieter. More durable. The relevance that comes from genuinely knowing things—not because you read the latest think piece, but because you’ve lived, and you’ve paid attention, and you’ve made mistakes and learned from them. The kind that gets passed down like a recipe, person to person. Not viral. Just reliable.
The world is obsessed with the young because youth has energy, novelty, urgency. That’s not wrong. But there’s something about the accumulated weight of years that creates a different kind of presence. You stop needing to prove anything. You start being more honest. You worry less about whether people like you and more about whether they need you. And it turns out those are very different questions.
I’m curious though—is this shift something you feel happening too, or am I painting a picture that’s just about my own life? And if you are sensing it, what are you actually grieving when you think about aging and relevance?