Nigella Lawson believes getting older is "so much easier" than being young as you can throw off the "shackles" of self-consciousness and enjoy the "great unfurling mystery" of life.
Ageing is a universal experience and yet so many of us have slightly different approaches to it and it can sometimes feel like society is piling on the pressure to be or feel a certain way about ourselves as the years go on. Whilst it can all-too often seem that all we hear about ageing is negative, Nigella Lawson has taken things in a different direction and we seriously admire her honest reflections about how she finds it not only joyful, but "easier" than being young. Writing an insightful piece for The Sunday Times’s Style just ahead of her 60th birthday on 6th January 2020, she once revealed how she’s fully embracing ageing.
The acclaimed food writer and TV cook declared, "I do have to say that getting older is so much easier than being young. The two great enemies of happiness are self-consciousness and pressure to conform, and the older one gets, the easier it is to throw off those shackles."
Admittedly, she reflected that she never "quite believe[s]" those who suggest that the "great benefit of age is that one no longer cares what anyone else thinks". However, Nigella added that she does feel that "one cares ever more fleetingly" as we get older - "or rather, one just doesn’t have it in oneself to care as much."
She continued, "Ageing happens whether we like it or not, and to mind about it is so futile as to be a waste of energy. Denial has an unfairly bad reputation: I am quite happy to block out those signs of ageing that, were I to focus on them, would make me unhappy."
Nigella went on to describe the very relatable way so many people have spent their youth "hating things" about the way they looked which, "from a more elderly vantage point" seems "so ridiculous" to her. This is something the food writer tries to learn from and she finds herself considering the future and how insignificant some of her worries might seem one day.
"Why worry about being 60 when, in 10 years’ time, it will seem laughably young by comparison? And if I don’t get to see 70, then looking older will be the least of my troubles," she said.
When it comes to the "most exciting thing" about ageing, Nigella expressed her opinion that it’s the opening up of possibilities that comes with it - something that is very different to how growing older can often be viewed.
"The other, and perhaps most exciting thing, about getting older is perhaps counter to how it’s always been perceived. Ageing is nearly always portrayed as a closing down of opportunities: I now see the rest of my life as a great unfurling mystery," she declared. "For the past three decades, as I grew up, established a career, had children and so on, I pretty much knew what the shape of my life would be, day to day. Now I feel that anything could happen."
"I feel so much more open to anything and everything," she said. "And that’s a wonderful way to walk into the future."
Following the publication of this piece and her 60th birthday, Nigella went on to tell The Guardian in October 2020 that after six decades of "being a ruminator" she’s "stopped looking back on the past". Though she wasn’t sure whether it was lockdown or getting older that helped with this, she reiterated that she was "very happy at last". This was something that came shining through when she got candid with Harper’s Bazaar in 2021 and spoke about how she thinks it’s important to take joy when she can.
"I just feel [self-care] about seizing the day and seizing the pleasures that are available, because that's how you can just feel more joy. It wasn't really here when there was the capacity or the option, the possibility for enormous amounts of joy. Why wouldn't you take it where you can?" she declared.
