Mind you, she was 15 when she released her album of that title. And when you’re 15, that’s a sentiment you can get behind more easily than if you’re say, approaching 47, and groaning in bed with a seized-up back after you foolishly tried to take a broken dishwasher to the tip. (You’ve got previous on this Tom – Ed.)

Sadly, Aaliyah didn’t live long enough to explore this potential reimagining of the subject – though even if she had, I imagine she’d have been in a position to get other people to move her broken dishwashers for her. Age, she may very well have concluded, ain’t nothing but a number – as long as you make enough money in your teens to ensure you never have to move bulky appliances for the rest of your days.

Once you’re past your R&B prodigy phase and moving into your bad back phase, age begins to feel like a grimly pertinent, largely unavoidable number. Reminders of its relevance to almost everything are rarely far away – especially if you’re a slightly older parent, in which case you’d best prepare yourself for hearing the word ‘geriatric’ rather earlier and more often than you might have hoped.

By the time many of us are in a position to think seriously about a mortgage, we’re already a few years into what would have been the maximum term. Whole industries, not to say whole socio-economic systems, are based around elaborate calculations about when each of us is likely to pop off.

But even if we accept that age is actually quite an important number, there are various distinct ways in which we can use this information. I’ve known people whose approach is incredibly systematic and driven: making and maintaining lists of life goals to be ticked off (hopefully) ahead of particular birthdays. And I suppose it’s one way – and for all I know, a pretty efficient one – of dealing with the potentially uncomfortable fact that we’re all going to cark it soon enough.

But it’s emphatically not my way. Leaving aside all the planning and list-making involved – and these are things I find very easy to leave aside – it very much depends on having a clearly defined sense of your own self, and your personal goals, from a young age. Otherwise you’re just throwing your limited time and energy pursuing a set of arbitrary targets that you might, in retrospect, not care at all about having achieved.

This is not to give an unqualified endorsement to one potential alternative, which is to have no ambitions at all. (Though, put like that, it does sound quite appealing.) But for those of us who find their ambitions can take quite some time to define, let alone achieve, there’s comfort to be found in the way time passes: which is to say, not entirely straightforwardly.

There’s a heck of a philosophical debate to be had about whether time does actually pass in a linear fashion, but I’m not sure a one-page column gives quite enough scope to do it justice. What I would certainly argue, though, is that we don’t perceive the passage of time evenly, or anything close to it.

Four minutes’ added time at the end of a football match go by at utterly different rates depending on whether your team is winning or losing. When your job is dull and repetitious, each day seems to go on forever, but the years zip past at a frankly terrifying rate. Which, I’ll grant you, does sound a touch depressing. But if that’s true, so must be the converse.

I changed career – by way of a fortuitous stumble more than a masterplan, admittedly – a little over three years ago. It feels more like ten years – in a good way – largely because it’s the first time I’ve had a job to which I’ve felt thoroughly suited. I’ve never exactly known that my working life would take a left turn in middle age. But looking back, I’ve always been especially intrigued by people who find themselves, late-ish in life, doing something unexpected or unconventional: the train driver-turned comedy writer (or vice versa), or the Olympic table tennis player still winning games in her 60s.

Perhaps it’s a natural comfort blanket if you suspect you haven’t quite found the life that suits you. But like all the best comfort blankets, it actually works.

And on discovering something that makes you tick – whether that’s in work or elsewhere, in the so-called prime of life or at the age when you can no longer safely move a dishwasher – well, that’s when time starts to behave in a much kinder way. The best weekends can contain more lasting memories than a nondescript year; and while time never quite stands still, it certainly finds ways of being more generous than usual.

Yes, age is a number, and an important one at that; but it’s almost never too late to find enjoyable ways to challenge it. And once I can move unaided again, that’s exactly what I’m going to be saying to my poor aching back. ■