The question
What worries you about getting older?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A newer fixed question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Every time I play tennis I come back with a fresh injury.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 2024 source ↗
Running out of time.
That I didn’t appreciate the smaller joys in life.
I’ve been very fortunate in that respect. In the early days I liked to be the bomb of the expedition, and rush on ahead and do things faster than anybody else. Those days merged very pleasantly into periods when I organized and inspired expeditions and selected these younger people who were then the bombs of the operation. And then it drifted into this involvement with the people of the area, still loving the mountains, but finding the people just as important too. And on and on it’s gone. As I get older and less physically capable, I find other challenges have grown up and become just as important to me.
Younger people being amazed that I know what song they’re listening to.
I’ve had motorcycle accidents – I had one where I ended up in intensive care. But if you are on a frontline – which I have been – and people start shooting at you – which they have done – you put yourself in quite considerable danger. So: on a moving frontline in northern Afghanistan in 2001.
Arrogance and narcissism.
Failure, being caught out, making an idiot of myself.
Not being a professional footballer.
Warm and embracing.
Impatience and vanity.
Edmund Hillary, Winston Churchill, Jon Snow, George H. W. Bush, Philippa Dunne, Michelle Collins
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