Fear & age?

[Skippyak]

The older we get, the more we cling to life. I am still more fearful skiing than I am cycling though. It is not rational. I am more than irritated by my skiing limitations.

[OakLeaf]

The older we get, the more we cling to life.

I've been saying that for decades, and you're the first person I've ever "met" who agrees with me! It's such a truism that "young people think they're immortal," where I believe it's the exact opposite - young people expect to die at any minute, so they can be more willing to take risks; older people gain this emotional conviction that since death hasn't happened to them yet, it isn't going to, and if they can just make their lives a little smaller and a little more unpleasant, they can last forever.

I try very, very hard not to do that. There's one thing that terrifies me above all else, and that is medical procedures. That is definitely a case where experience led to the terror. So I've tightened up my paperwork and prepared myself for hard decisions as best I can, knowing it might not be enough.

As far as two-wheeled exploits, it's being off the bikes because of injuries that has made me somewhat more tentative, not the injuries themselves (which mostly didn't happen on two wheels anyway). I ride fewer miles, my skills get rusty, and that eats at my confidence ... as it very well should IMO. I completely lost all confidence at low-speed maneuvers a while back, and that's been a HUGE mental block, but I don't attribute that to age at all (though I'm not entirely sure what to attribute it to ... I'd had enough low-speed tipovers before that that *didn't* much hurt my confidence ...)