The Road to Meta-Age
Why Riding a Motorbike Is About Much More Than Twisting a Throttle
Over the last forty-five years I have worked with athletes, chief executives, business leaders and some of the world’s leading spas. People often ask me what separates those who sustain extraordinary performance from those who do not. They expect me to talk about talent. Motivation. Discipline.
I do not.
The answer is identity.
Identity is what remains when motivation disappears.
I did not learn that lesson in a lecture theatre. I learned it as a little boy.
If you have read the Meta-Age Handbook, you may remember a photograph of a small Black boy sitting on his brother’s Triumph motorcycle in Fulham, West London. His feet do not reach the ground. He is not wearing a crash helmet. He has no ambition to become a motorcyclist. He simply looks as if he belongs exactly where he is.
That little boy was me.
For years I thought it was just an old family photograph.
Now I think it is the beginning of Meta-Age.
It has always been my ambition to create a straight-talking platform grounded in lived experience. The adversities I have faced have not defined me. They have shaped the questions Meta-Age exists to ask.
My mother rode pillion in the Caribbean before I was born. My older brother rode motorcycles. My younger brother still rides today.
Motorcycles were not unusual in our family. They were simply part of life.
But it was not only motorcycles.
I loved football. I was always outdoors. I was forever looking for the next adventure.
At the time they felt like separate interests. Football. Adventure. Exploring. Motorbikes.
Looking back, I can see they were never separate. They were all expressions of the same person I was becoming.
I was not collecting hobbies. I was building an identity.
That is where so much advice about healthy ageing gets it wrong. It starts with behaviour. Meta-Age starts much earlier. It starts with identity.
Participation is not about keeping busy. Participation is a way of being before it is a way of doing. It is choosing to stay engaged with life, whatever form that takes.
Identity is not built in one dramatic moment. It is built through thousands of ordinary moments that quietly shape us.
That is why, more than fifty years later, I still ride.
People often tell me that riding a motorcycle is not exercise. “You just sit there and twist a throttle.”
They are right. Motorcycling is not exercise. It is participation in its purest form.
After two hours on my Triumph Bonneville my neck is stiff from fighting the wind. My shoulders ache. My forearms are tired. My thighs have spent hours gripping more than two hundred kilograms of British engineering through bends and roundabouts.
The following morning I am often more fatigued than after a ninety-minute cycle. Not because I have been sitting. Because I have been completely engaged.
A motorcycle does not insulate you from the world. It immerses you in it.
You do not watch the weather. You wear it.
You do not glide over the road. You read every ripple in its surface.
You feel the crosswind before you see the trees moving. You smell woodland, diesel and hot tarmac.
Every second you are scanning. Loose gravel. A pothole. The van edging towards the white line. The driver waiting at the junction. The lorry creating turbulence.
Every second you are asking the same question. What happens next?
That is why I ride. Not to escape life. To experience it more completely.
Whether I am riding through rural France, climbing Alpine passes, negotiating the organised chaos of Indian roads or following the Caribbean coastline, the experience is always the same. Complete engagement. Complete participation.
Recently I came across a piece of research that made me smile. It found that people who think of themselves as “an exerciser” are much more likely to stay physically active than people who simply exercise. The researchers concluded that identity helps create behaviour, not simply reflect it.
I smiled because I had spent forty years watching exactly the same thing. Not only in elite athletes. Not only in chief executives. But in ordinary people.
Behaviour usually follows identity, not the other way round.
I do not wake up thinking, “I have got to go to the gym.” I wake up thinking, “What am I going to do after I have been to the gym?”
I do not ride because motorcycles are exciting. I ride because they still ask something of me.
I do not look for challenge. Challenge has become part of who I am.
Age does not usually steal our identity. We gradually surrender it. By participating less. Risking less. Expecting less of ourselves.
Thirty years ago, while riding across Europe, I pulled into a small town late one afternoon. The petrol station had closed until morning, so I needed somewhere to stay. The woman at the local bed and breakfast told me they were full.
Outside, a man asked what was wrong. I explained. “Wait here,” he said. A minute later he came back. “She made a mistake.” Apparently there was a room after all. When I went back inside, the woman barely looked at me as she handed me the key.
I will leave you to decide what happened.
It did not stop me travelling. It did not stop me riding. Participation has always mattered more to me than comfort.
People often ask me how to age well. They expect me to talk about supplements. Exercise. Longevity. Those things matter. But they are not where the story begins.
Healthy ageing does not begin at fifty or sixty. It begins in childhood. It begins when we start becoming the people we will spend the rest of our lives trying to live as.
That is why the photograph in the Meta-Age Handbook matters so much to me. It is not a picture of a future motorcyclist. It is a picture of a little boy whose identity was already taking shape long before he understood what identity meant.
People often ask me what Meta-Age means. It is not about pretending we are younger than we are. It is not about chasing longevity. It is about preserving the identity that keeps us participating in life.
Once participation becomes part of who you are, it no longer depends on motivation. It becomes your nature.