We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count.

Age becomes the headline only when nothing else about a person is being counted. While someone is still producing, still involved, still in the middle of something, nobody thinks to reach for the number. The counting starts when the other measures run out, which says more about how they are being seen than about how old they are.

Keep something going that gets counted for its own sake: work, a craft, people you are responsible to, a thing you are learning. It does not have to be impressive. It only has to be current, and being current is what keeps the arithmetic of years from becoming the whole story.