I’ve always had this belief that more of my life has happened than what’s ahead of me. I still believe that. But that episode helped me think about what “ahead of me” actually means, and it’s changed how I’m approaching this for myself and my loved ones. 

Mel Robbins had the director of MIT’s AgeLab, Dr. Joseph Coughlin, on her show. He brought a suit with him. It’s called AGNES — Age Gain Now Empathy System — and it’s built to make a fit, capable woman in her fifties feel what it’s like to be ninety. Impaired vision. Impaired hearing. A gait that won’t stay even. Mel put it on and within minutes she was saying get me out of here. She struggled to pick the washing up off the floor, and I instantly connected it to watching Mum pick things up off the floor. 

I sat there thinking about pillows. Yeah, I know — what do pillows have to do with feeling the impact of ageing? 

At training, I have my clients walk on pillows, stand on pillows, balance on pillows. It looks quirky. A bit odd, maybe, if you’re watching from the outside. But what it does is create an uneven surface, throws the balance off just enough. I’ve been doing it for years as a way of building resilience in the body. Listening to Mel in that suit, I realised I’ve actually been rehearsing my clients for a version of themselves that is coming, whether they’ve named it yet or not. That’s not a training gimmick. That’s pushing back and maintaining what might otherwise decline quicker. 

Then he laid out the maths. From birth to 21 is roughly 8,000 days. Call it childhood. Twenty-one to your mid-forties, another 8,000. Mid-forties to 65, another 8,000. And 65 to 85 and beyond — another 8,000 days. 

I went through my own midlife chunk like a wrecking ball went through it. Divorce. A complete career change. Life turned upside down and rebuilt from nothing. So when I heard him talk about the next 8,000-day stretch, the one I’m sitting inside right now heading toward my last one, I didn’t feel young. But I did feel something I wasn’t expecting — there is still a significant amount of time left. Not endless. But significant. And what we do with it is still, mostly, up to us. 

At Mum’s that week, I asked her — if you get to the point where you can’t do things for yourself, and we can’t get care in the home, what do you want? How do you want it handled? It was totally okay if she didn’t have the answers right then and there. What matters is she’s thinking about it now, while it’s still her decision to make, not something decided for her in a crisis. Having some control over what’s coming, even just deciding how you want it to go, makes you feel better. It replaces the unknown with the known. And there’s so much about ageing that’s unknown already — we don’t need to add more to the pile by refusing to look at it. She said something to me a few years back that’s stayed with me ever since: “I didn’t expect life to be like this.” I suppose none of us do. But there are things we can do to keep pushing back. 

There were three questions raised in that conversation that stuck with me too. One was about your home — who’s going to change your light bulbs when you can’t get up the ladder yourself? My ceilings in the new place are enormous, and even my son struggled to get the ladder up there recently. I’ve already worked out I’ll need a reliable handyman on a quarterly booking, because that’s not a job I’ll be doing myself forever. But I’ll keep trying while I can. 

Another was where you’ll get your ice cream — can you still get to the small things that make you smile, on a whim, whenever you want one? For me, it’s coffee culture, being able to go sit somewhere with a good coffee in hand. For Mum, that question barely applies. She doesn’t want to go anywhere. What she has sorted, without ever calling it a plan, is that her doctor, her church, and the shops are all within a block. She worked it out long before anyone gave it a name. 

The one that really got me was the third. Who will you have lunch with? 

I am so buried in raising the grandkids, looking after Mum, being there for Paul, that friendships are the thing that quietly slips. Not because I stopped valuing them. Because there’s no time left in the day by the time everyone else is looked after. That question sat with me longer than I expected it to. I’ve started reaching back out — to people I genuinely value, trying to find a way to keep something regular going, without pretending I can drop everything else to do it. 

We can fight ageing. We can push back on it through the choices we make every day. But we can’t stop it. It’s inevitable, and some level of decline is coming for all of us. The suit, the 8,000 days, the questions — none of it is about fear. It’s about deciding, now, while it’s still ours to decide.