> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.theheroworld.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Experiment 25 : Perhaps we don't grow old when our bodies age. Perhaps we grow old when we stop answering the Call - URL: https://www.theheroworld.com/experiment-25-perhaps-we-dont-grow-old-when-our-bodies-age-perhaps-we-grow-old-when-we-stop-answering-the-call/ - Published: 2026-10-20T13:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T13:00:04.000Z - Author: Matteo Scaletti - Tags: purpose, identity A few weeks ago I reconnected with an old friend I hadn't spoken to in years. During our late teens we were inseparable. We trained together. Went out together. Spent our weekends chasing girls, talking about life, dreaming about the future. His name is Riccardo. He is a year older than me and, back then, if you had asked anyone at school which one of us was more likely to build an extraordinary life, nobody would have picked me. Riccardo was the popular one. Girls loved him. He was funny, charismatic without trying, dressed well, drove a beautiful car and somehow always seemed comfortable in his own skin. > "Finding your purpose in life is not a question you answer once. It is a question life keeps asking you — and the only real failure is when you stop answering." I, on the other hand, was much quieter. More isolated. I always felt like I was observing life from the outside rather than participating in it. Then life happened. I left Italy. Australia. America. Brazil. One journey became another. And somewhere along the way we stopped talking. Until recently. When I saw him again, I was shocked. Not because he'd gone gray. That happens to all of us. Not because he'd gained weight. Bodies change. It was something much harder to describe. The light had gone. The curiosity. The enthusiasm. The sense that tomorrow might hold something extraordinary. What I heard instead was resignation. A quiet acceptance. The kind of philosophy I've heard so often growing up in Italy. *"What can you do?"* *"You just get on with it."* *"This is life."* It wasn't sadness. It was something worse. It was the absence of possibility. Driving home that evening, I couldn't stop thinking about him. Not because I was judging him. Because, for a brief moment, I wasn't looking at Riccardo. I was looking at a version of myself. Around the same time, I came across two ideas that seemed completely unrelated. The first was a conversation between philosopher John Danaher and Lex Fridman. Danaher said something remarkably simple. For almost all of human history, life had only one purpose. Survival. Our ancestors didn't wake up asking themselves whether they had found their passion or their purpose. They woke up asking whether they would make it through another winter. Whether they would find food. Whether their children would survive. For thousands of years, meaning wasn't the problem. Survival was. Then humanity became incredibly good at surviving. Technology. Medicine. Agriculture. Civilisation. For the first time in history, millions of people no longer spend their days fighting simply to stay alive. And that's when a completely new problem appeared. Meaning. The second thing I stumbled upon was an experiment called Universe 25. In 1968, scientist John Calhoun created what could only be described as paradise for mice. Unlimited food. Unlimited water. No predators. No disease. Perfect temperature. Everything a mouse could possibly need. At first, the colony flourished. Then, slowly, something strange happened. Many stopped reproducing. Social structures collapsed. Some males withdrew completely from life. They spent their days eating, sleeping and obsessively grooming themselves. Calhoun called them *The Beautiful Ones.* Perfect coats. Perfect health. No scars. No battles. No purpose. Eventually, the colony disappeared. Not because it ran out of resources. Because it ran out of something much harder to measure. Reading about Universe 25, I couldn't stop thinking about Riccardo. Not because he reminded me of the mice. Because he reminded me how quietly a human being can stop answering life's invitations. I remembered that, when we were younger, Riccardo loved drawing. Comic books. Superheroes. He could spend hours sketching characters and inventing worlds. Somewhere along the way, he joined the family business. Years passed. One day became another. The sketches stopped. The dreams became stories about what he *used* to want to do. I don't know exactly when it happened. Maybe he doesn't either. Joseph Campbell believed every hero receives a Call to Adventure. Most people imagine it arrives once. I don't think that's true. I think life keeps calling us. It calls us when we're twenty. It calls us again at thirty-five. Again after a divorce. After losing a job. After moving to another country. After meeting someone who changes us. After losing someone we love. Life never stops calling. The question is whether we still answer. Looking back at my own life, I realised something. People often tell me I'm lucky. That I've lived in Australia. America. Travelled the world. Started over several times. Built projects. Written. Recorded podcasts. Interviewed strangers. None of those things are what kept me young. The thing that kept me young... was continuing to say yes. Yes to uncertainty. Yes to new countries. Yes to difficult conversations. Yes to failure. Yes to starting again. Yes to leaving behind versions of myself that no longer fit. I've always loved Ulysses. Most people think his story is about getting home. I've never seen it that way. To me, Ulysses isn't the hero because he reaches Ithaca. He's the hero because, somewhere deep inside him, there's always another horizon calling his name. Maybe that's what youth really is. Not smooth skin. Not thick hair. Not strong muscles. Maybe youth is simply the willingness to keep leaving the shore. I don't know if Riccardo will ever start drawing again. I hope he does. Not because the world desperately needs another comic-book artist. But because I have a feeling that somewhere inside him, there's still a seventeen-year-old boy filling blank pages with impossible worlds. And perhaps that's true for all of us. Perhaps we don't grow old because time passes. Perhaps we grow old the day life calls our name...and we stop answering. --- **Check out my book:** [But Maybe NotBut Maybe Not \[Scaletti, Matteo\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. 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