Op-Ed: Why we need to hurdle the invisible barrier of age

I recently watched Tina—the documentary on Tina Turner—and it made me acutely aware of just how much I didn’t know about someone whose music I’d been listening to for more than 30 years. Back in the ’80s, I just assumed she was in her twenties, rather than being a forty-something with grownup children, whose music rocked the planet hit-after-hit.

It got me to thinking about age and the expectations we put on ourselves in various stages of our lives. The typical road map goes: university in our early twenties; when we hit our thirties we should be settled down and into a steady career; the forties see us providing financial stability for our family, while as we enter into our fifties we slowly start winding down hopefully to be retiring by our mid-sixties, and then catching re-runs of talent shows on TV by our seventies. Wow, that sounds depressing.

Thankfully, we don’t live in the 1950s any more and the same types of societal pressures are not enforced on us— but instead have been replace with another greater type of pressure: the one that we put on ourselves. Perhaps as part of the dated ’50s legacy, a lot of us still feel we shouldn’t be taking risks once we are beyond a certain age. Well, that’s not what Tina Turner did.

By her late forties Turner decided she needed to reinvent herself. She packed her bags and moved from the US to London to record new music and re-launch herself. The result was the creation of hits like ‘What’s Love Got To Do’ and a career renaissance and superstardom. There was little guarantee of success—she could have returned to the US and continued a dwindling career singing at cabaret-nightclubs in Las Vegas, but she took control of her fears.

“The key is to use that baggage to your advantage so when you do take risks (or adventures) it is done with firmer footing.”

Turner of course is not the only one to take a chance on her talent; Helen Mirren, after almost 45 years of acting, won her Academy Award in her sixties. The point I’m trying to make is that age should not be an obstacle for our successes or life adventures, and what matters most is our belief in our abilities and talent. The latter being the one common factor in Turner and Mirren—they unequivocally believed in their talent and took chances on that belief.

It is hard to keep that fire and spark alive inside of us as we grow older. I certainly don’t take as many risks as I used to, if I do they are more calculated as my risks come with 38 years of baggage tethered to them. The key is to use that baggage to your advantage so when you do take risks (or adventures) it is done with firmer footing.

Six months ago, I was headhunted by a brand in Canada to join them as their new Creative Director. The move required me to live between Dubai and Canada for the foreseeable future. There were no guarantees for success, but I took the chance and I’m thankful that I did.

The past six months have been some of the most exciting and exhilarating of my life and have enriched me both personally and professionally. I didn’t think such a thing would be possible at the age of 38, but the realization is that it is, and will continue to be.

Babak Golkar is the co-founder and designer of Emperor London.