Movement, Time, and What a Body Teaches You
At 68 years of age, I have become less interested in giving advice and far more interested in reflecting on what life quietly teaches you when you stick at something long enough.
For me, that “something” has been movement.
I have been a runner and jogger since I was around 12 years old. Not because I was chasing performance or outcomes, but because I enjoyed it, the movement itself, the social aspect, and the feeling of using my body as it was designed to be used. Over time, running simply became part of how I lived.
Across the decades, that movement has taken many forms. Casual jogging, competitive half marathons, long solo runs, injuries, rest periods, recovery, and adjustments. I have run events in many places around the world, each one adding to a growing awareness of how the body responds to stress, rest, and care.
What I learned, slowly and sometimes the hard way, is that movement does something far deeper than keep you fit. It teaches patience. It teaches restraint. It teaches humility. Injuries force you to listen. Recovery teaches you when to push and when to stop. Over time, you start to recognise patterns, signals, and limits that no instruction manual can give you.
I do not see this as a philosophy or a rule others should follow. It is simply something that has unfolded for me through experience. I have tried supplements, adjusted my eating habits, changed how I prepare meals, and learned how small, consistent routines support how I feel both physically and mentally. None of it extreme. None of it dogmatic. Just practical learning accumulated over years.
What stands out now is how much better I feel when I move regularly, whether that is jogging, stretching, gardening, walking the dog, or tackling everyday tasks. It keeps me feeling ‘oiled’, capable, and engaged with life. Without movement, I notice how quickly the world can shrink, physically and mentally.
I am no doctor, and I don’t offer advice. What I do recognise, however, is that by the time you reach your late sixties, you come to understand just how central health and mobility are to quality of life. Not in theory, in lived reality.
This reflection is one of the reasons I created Wisdom Wears Wrinkles.
The project is not about experts or instructions. It is about providing space for people in their third act of life to talk about what they have learned through experience, whether that is through work, relationships, health, setbacks, resilience, or simply staying present over many years.
The conversations are simple one‑to‑one chats, conducted online with a single click. No technical hurdles, no preparation, no expectations. I ask questions, I listen, and I learn every time.
Finding guests has been slower than I expected, which has surprised me, and is why I have chosen to put myself more openly into the conversation. Not as someone with answers, but as someone who believes deeply that lived experience, in all its ordinary and extraordinary forms, deserves to be heard.
If you are 65+ (or 105), male or female, retired or still commercially active, or anywhere in between, and feel you may have reflections or experiences worth sharing, I would genuinely love to hear from you.
Warm regards,
Richard John Potton
Founder – Wisdom Wears Wrinkles
Be a guest on Wisdom Wears Wrinkles:
https://www.wisdomwearswrinkles.com/be-a-guest
Or, if you prefer email, write directly to me at:
richard@wisdomwearswrinkles.com
Because every wrinkle tells a story.