On being fearless.
Fearlessness will keep you formidable - and visible - no matter your age.
Fearlessness: what a life-enhancing, glorious, fight-y quality! It’s what makes you get up ready to spring into action - and live life on your terms. It’s what makes you say what you think, without misplaced timidity – or aggression. It’s ‘feeling the fear but doing it anyway’1 – trivial and true. Of the qualities I’d pick from the cards this poker-life has dealt, fearlessness is one. What a beautiful quality to show (off) at any age.
Yet fearlessness is not necessarily genetically bestowed. It develops. You learn it and earn it. Visibility, bolstered by the presence of conviction, will follow.
For me, fearlessness came later and flourished when experience and wisdom aligned. No, let me be honest. The blueprint was always there. I moved away from the security of my country, I travelled alone, I started businesses, with risk. I said ‘no’, often alone, to prejudice - and more. Except that now fearlessness is fuelled not by the to-hell-with-it audacity of youth but by the discernment, and cleverness, of age.
In this series of posts on Rethinking Age, I encourage you: be fearless. The principles you live by, the ability to stand up, speak up: this is fearlessness. No matter your age, this quality will keep you formidable - and visible - forever.
How I learnt to stand up
A childhood steeped in the ‘60s and ‘70s fight for social justice, I believe in equality and dignity for all2. A religious upbringing evolved into humanist principles - and those principles got me here.
I made a stand against racism – not in a militant, march-going way, but by confronting it, unfailingly, whenever I encountered it. I made a stand against discrimination by paying attention to – and honouring – the brilliance of the women around me, encouraging them to push themselves up, be confident, aim higher. Whenever I have been in a position of power at work, a strategic ‘do you have an equal opportunity policy?’3 – was inevitably followed by real change, with companies, projects, fielding more equal teams and assuring a respectful environment for all. Small victories, but meaningful, no matter how painful – and lonely – it had been to achieve them.
How I learnt to speak up
A life-enhancing story shows how I learnt to speak up. Dr McKnight4, professor in social anthropology at the London School of Economics in the early ‘90s, was tragically going deaf. His peremptory ‘speak up!’ was known - and feared - by us, his students. In a striking metaphor, he used to say ‘either I go to the wall - or I make people go to the wall’, urging people to speak up so that he could hear, even if it meant the speaker had to shout5. Learning to speak up, literally, gave me the confidence to speak up - instinctively.
Dr McKnight’s story helped me cope with my own medical condition that, for a short time, limited my mobility. I wasn’t going to be marginalised - I would advocate for my needs, just as Dr McKnight had taught. I wasn’t going to be silent - I would have my voice heard, just as Dr McKnight had taught. And it worked.
Heroism versus everyday resistance
In the West, our generations have only known times of peace. We have never had to risk our lives to stand up for our beliefs. In the television series Rise of the Nazis6, I cry at the story of 24-year-old engineer Hélène Podliasky, a Jewish agent for the French Resistance, one of tens of thousands of young women who tried to do something to resist. Hélène was captured by the Gestapo and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, a sickening place of no return. Forced to work in an armament factory, she worked on the development of the anti-tank weapons that, in the final battles against the advance of the Allies, proved hopelessly unreliable. Using her engineering skills, Hélène found a way to sabotage them - and successfully so.
‘This is my moment’, she thought, ‘this is my purpose, this is one thing I can finally do’. A defiant act amidst catastrophe. An extraordinary moment of fearless resistance in the life of one courageous human being.
When is my moment? What is my purpose? What is the one thing I can finally do? I have thought about this, obsessively, throughout my life. My answer has always been to stand up and speak up - and I have done so, obsessively, throughout my life.
Hélène’s extraordinary bravery is a powerful reminder to be the bravest you can be. Acts of everyday resistance do create a better world. We do not have to be heroes but we do have to be brave, courageous, humans.
The splendour of fearlessness
Look at the Shard. What a statement it makes! No matter where you are in London, you look up and it’s there, in its fearless splendour. Set off against the venerable Southwark Cathedral, on the south bank of the Thames, in a what’s-a-thousand-years-between-friends swagger, and against the spire of St George the Martyr, the Shard articulates, for me, the beauty and power of conviction.
I write to offer alternative perspectives on age, based on how I got here. The ability to stand up and speak up is sustaining me - with all its treasured lessons. It is the continuity with my younger self. It is the pride in my years now. It makes me fearless. No misplaced timidity here7.
May you live with fearlessness. No matter your age, this quality will keep you formidable - and visible - forever.
Fx
References
From Susan Jeffers’ ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’, 1987. I find the sentence a helpful shorthand for courage.
Papal encyclicals have emphasised the importance of human dignity. Pope Francis’ ‘Fratelli Tutti’, 2020, stresses the inalienable dignity of all humans, not just Catholics, a courageous stand in these divisive, divided times.
With thanks to she-who-knows-everything friend, let’s call her Carol.
Dr McKnight’s obituary. The Guardian. 28-Jun-2006.
This story is meaningful to fabulous-friend Lisa - and helped her tell her own.
Rise of the Nazis, the BBC 2019 documentary on Hitler’s seizure of power and fall at the end of WWII. Re-broadcast on the Victory in Europe (VE) Day 80th Anniversary on 08-May-2025. Hélène Podliasky’s story is told in extraordinarily affecting terms by Professor Hannah Elsisi, Egyptian historian, in The Downfall season, Episode 1: Who Will Betray Him?
No misplaced timidity in Public Enemy’s Harder Than You Think (‘you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything’). I want to acknowledge this song’s roots in Black political activism - yet these lyrics speak to a universal human message of dignity and courage. This is the massively successful UK Paralympics version. It makes you want to get up, just like that, for people of all abilities – and superhuman ones like the Paralympic athletes that blew people’s minds in London, in 2012. (Volume up!)
Advocating for your own needs is also about holding the conversation for people who share them but may not have your voice. It's great to see you outline this drive you have, so clearly. As we get older, maybe we also pay less attention to where we fit in and more to how we now know how to shape the space we need around us.
Thank you Francesca. We need role models at every age and I think I have a new one!