The Road to Meta-Age
People ask where it came from. They expect research, psychology or some defining moment in later life. There was a defining moment, but the story started long before I understood it.
I’ve lived several lives. I’ve known discipline and drugs, success and failure, injury and starting over. At 33 I stopped the drugs completely, class A to nothing. None of it followed a plan. I tried things, got them wrong, changed my mind, walked away from things I’d become good at and became a beginner again.
The only thread through all of it was participation.
God’s Waiting Room
Years later, visiting my late mother in her nursing home, I noticed something I couldn’t forget. Most residents sat for much of the day in what I privately called “God’s waiting room.”
My mother was 92, but she refused to sit in the common room.
“They make me feel old,” she told me.
Most of them were younger than she was.
There was a tiny minority who seemed different. They still joined in the group activities, including things like chair aerobics. They were still interested, still engaged, still participating.
I wasn’t judging anyone. I knew nothing about the lives they’d lived or the illnesses they carried. But I couldn’t ignore the contrast, and it made me question something much bigger than ageing.
At what point do we begin withdrawing from our own lives?
And, perhaps more importantly: why?
The Next Forty Years
In my forties, I saw myself at roughly the halfway point. What would I do with the next forty?
I began thinking of life as a bank balance. When we participate, physically, socially, intellectually or emotionally, we make deposits. When we withdraw, we make deductions. We stop going somewhere. Stop calling someone. Stop learning. Stop putting ourselves in situations where we might fail.
A deposit here. A withdrawal there. Repeated over a lifetime.
What balance will I have?
I gave that question a form: the 40 editions of Meta-Age Voice. Identity. Health. Relationships. Movement. Money. Sex. Purpose. Retirement. Family. Dying. The things we meet while we’re busy living.
Forty years. Forty editions. There will never be edition 41.
I didn’t want an endless stream of recycled stories, produced because a publishing model demands something new to sell next month. It’s a finite body of work. Read what interests you. Ignore what doesn’t. Come back when something speaks to you.
Then My Body Had Its Say
I’ve spent most of my life moving, and it has left its mark. I’ve injured every major joint and had several invasive surgeries. My left knee is bone-on-bone.
In 2025, it became painful enough that I could barely sleep. I was offered an expensive injection I could barely afford, with no guarantee it would work.
I didn’t ask, what happens if it fails?
I asked, what if it works?
I had the injection.
Today, when I need to run, I run.
My knee hasn’t magically repaired itself. I haven’t defeated age. My body was telling me it was time for a change.
Not to stop. To change.
After my hip surgery I could no longer teach comfortably, and traditional yoga no longer agreed with my body. I could have stopped. Instead I changed the way I trained and the environment I trained in. I worked with the body I had rather than wishing for the one I’d had before.
That thinking became KunAqua, using water as the environment for movement and adaptation, and JUMPGA, using the unstable surface of a rebounder to challenge balance and control.
Different environments. Different methods. The same underlying idea.
Participation Over Withdrawal.
The Road
That is also why I ride a motorcycle. Not because riding one at 68 proves anything about age.
I ride because I want to ride.
On a motorcycle you have to participate. You look ahead. Respond to changing conditions. Make constant adjustments. You cannot ride from the sidelines. And first, you have to choose to get on the bike.
Life isn’t very different. Things change beneath you. Your body. Your relationships. Your work. Things you thought were permanent disappear.
I’ve fallen down often enough. I brush myself off and carry on.
The question isn’t whether life changes. It’s whether you continue changing with it.
I Recognised It
The nursing home didn’t create Meta-Age. It made me see something I’d been living for most of my life.
Martial arts. Art school. Creative Director. Publisher. Plumber. Builder. Yoga. Drugs and stopping drugs. Writing. Teaching. Injury. Failure. Success. Starting again. Motorcycles.
Different chapters that looked disconnected, until I saw the thread running through them.
Participation.
Meta-Age isn’t about trying to stay young. It’s about refusing to regard yourself as finished. A Meta-Ager hasn’t stopped becoming. You can be one at 28 or at 88.
I didn’t invent Meta-Age.
I recognised it.
Participation Over Withdrawal.