Acting My Age

I was lately in the doctor’s office, surrounded by a bunch of old people with nothing else much to do.  I have hardly ever needed a doctor over the last thirty years, except for the annual checkup.  I have blood pressure and statin prescriptions largely because of family history, so they make me come in twice a year now to be sure things are still ok, although I’ve taken them for years and check my weight and blood pressure at home every week.  Anyway, I was sitting and listening to my MP3 player, and watching the ancients passing the time when I had one of those dreadful realizations:  I fit right in!

At sixty six I don’t really feel all that old, and I treat retirement as some grand lottery I have won.  That is, I’m happy with life, take my time enjoying it, do what I want when I want.  I spent most of my life pouring energy into a not always awful career and pouring money into a usually worthwhile family.  I never seemed to have much time for myself.  Until lately.  Once I reconciled that I am simply what I am, and will never be what I thought I might be at various times past, everything has gone very well.

Anyone who tells you sixty is the new thirty is not sixty or is lying.  I don’t have the energy that I had even a decade ago, and I do things slowly, and I get a little confused, and I can hardly recover from excesses that I once hardly noticed.  You can stay in shape and look good but only if you treat such discipline as a full-time chore, which is not what I planned for retirement.  The trick is to enjoy being where I am, all the time, and to accept limits while rejoicing in freedoms.

The result is that I’m quite happy.  I walk, exercise, eat, think, read, write, converse, and take the time to enjoy everything I encounter.  I tend to think of myself as finally being in the aristocracy I always thought I should have been born into.  When I get bored, I pity the poor peasants who are still working.

Mostly, I never leave anything significant on the table as time passes.  Any day might be my last _ if not the last of life, then the last of clear thought, or mobility, or decent hearing and eyesight.   Each morning is new and miraculous, each day should be filled, and each night left cleansed of other possibilities.  Mostly, life should be a continuous stream of nothing to regret.
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Some people have absolute pitch, some an infallible sense of taste, some see a person once and recognize them for the rest of their lives, some can never be lost.  I have always had a kind of accurately set internal chronometer that set my current age against the expectations of my life.  This has mostly been a happy thing.  When I was young, I knew I was young and gloried in it, when I was middle aged I accepted the many joys available there, now that I am old there are different, but interesting, options available. 

All of my days had certain limitations, but also certain possibilities.  The fortunate part of knowing your age is you can take full advantage of it.  I usually did so, and my main regret throughout life is that I could not remain stuck wherever I was forever.  I took to calling these good times in my life “bubbles” because I knew they would burst, but they were miraculous while they lasted.  And time can run fairly slowly, so by being aware such times can seem to stretch on almost forever.  I never ended up wishing I was younger, or older.

Of course I do not claim I never miss nor desire to be something else.  To be young again _ ah that sometimes sounds great.  But sometimes _ well, I have a good memory and unfortunately I can always recall the times of horror and desperation as easily as I can remember the grand ecstatic moments.  For that matter, I would always prefer to have been rich, or tall, or have certain personality traits I do not _ but wishes only carry you so far, and the worst thing about wishes is they can hide the glories available in the moment you actually inhabit.

So I try to act my age.  More than that, I try to fully be my age.  I don’t want to pretend I am younger than I am, I don’t want to too quickly embrace being older than I am, I want to follow the logic of my internal clock and see what the world offers at exactly this hour.  It has worked well so far.

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Lewis Carroll’s Father William cannot be improved upon….

 
"YOU are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

In my youth," Father William replied to his son,

"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,

And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,

"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak

For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,

And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose

That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"

Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!"
-

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One of the saddest and most frustrating traps you can run into is to spend your time hating your true age, wishing to be older or younger than you are.  You will then spend many of your actual precious moments unable to experience the full benefits of your existence, while futilely trying to turn the clock ahead or behind.

It’s an envious culture, and part of this comes from that envy.  Young people often wish they were older _ to get a driving license, to move up the corporate ladder _ while mostly what they really seek is the perceived advantages such age would bring them _ which is often an illusion.  Older people often seek to be younger _ and spend countless minutes and coin on nostrums, exercises, and concepts like the mystics of old _ eating jade and gold to become immortal.  They are also doomed to frustration and failure, and miss what glories might come from being wiser and less ambitious than impetuous youth.

You really should take a deep breath once in while and appreciate exactly where you are in the calendar of your years. Of course, nobody knows how long any given calendar may be _ but you can assume it is more or less normal until events prove otherwise.  It is fun to be even an adolescent as long as you respect being one, it is possible to revel in the pain and struggle of middle age because it is a temporary thing with its own rich layers of achievement, it is even fun to be old as long as you are not completely destitute and alone _ at least one of which you can try to repair right up until the day you die.

Naturally, you have control of your life _ well, you have influence on your life _ no matter what your age, and you should exercise that well and wisely to improve your situation and to expand your experience of miraculous existence.  But some things that are easy at one age are almost impossible at another, and to fight the impossible is usually just another frustration.  So try to act your age, be your age, and respect your age.  You owe that to yourself.
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Sorting life by decades is a useful convention, although all lives are subject to time and situation and vary infinitely.  Somehow, the years do roughly sort themselves into certain time periods, and although the edges are badly defined and trends overlap considerably, it is often possible to look back (or around) and say, “in these years, I was generally doing this and thinking that.”  These actual memories are often far more important than the grand goals we set ourselves looking far into the imagined future.

So, at least in this culture, it is “normal” to be a child until the age of ten, with no responsibilities and lots of new learning and adventures.  From ten to twenty it is all about becoming responsibly independent and taking on the traits of adulthood, unfortunately including grown-up vices.  A young adult from twenty to thirty is desperately seeking a place in the world, a career, a family or group, a location, an inner conviction, any fulcrum on which to rest inner worth and outside recognition and money _ yet at the same time, enjoying the absolutely gorgeous moments of being young and free and physically prime.  From thirty to forty, everything seems to mature with both solidity and desperation, both excitement at becoming important and a growing feeling of being trapped.  By forty to fifty, the first intimation of becoming older cannot be missed, life is a constant rush of pressure and expectations, there is no time and little energy and everything seems to drive forward with an implacable and irresistible logic of its own.  From fifty to sixty, the pressure lets up a bit, but the sense of loss increases, and it is impossible not to dream (or try to do) what one might have done on a different track in life, leading to frequent reevaluation and mid-life crisis.  By sixty to seventy, it is all about adjusting to becoming tired, irrelevant, and phased out in all ways _ sometimes happily, sometimes not _ with the compensation that most of the guilt for anything can be dropped since nothing can be done about it.  And then there are the later decades, of which the less said the better, but with their own particular harmony of fitness.

Some say this is depressing.  You should be able to start over at sixty as if you were thirty, this is a new age, power and drive are no longer limited by old biologic constraints.  Maybe that is true, maybe it will become more true.  But won’t something be lost?  Reviewing age honestly, is it not good that there are stages we can all experience, each different and varied, like the movements of a grand symphony.  Who wants to forever be a child, or to constantly meditate with the elders, or to rush trapped in schedule while middle-aged?  Let your age speak to you, not as a dictator but as a coach, and life will be deeper and more filled with joyful meaning.

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Death Rides The LIRR

Janet plopped down on the 9:04 to the city one morning, trying to shake a vague sense of ennui resulting from too many days doing too much the same thing.  A grey fog covered the spring trees, a few folks filtered into car on the off-peak run, mostly quiet, but the background noises were always there.  Suddenly there was a profound hush, an almost physical sense of absolute quiet.

A black-hooded figure with a scythe sat down next to her.  “They let you bring something like that on the train, these days?” she asked, somewhat surprised.

“Oh, it’s traditional, and of course nothing yet detects me completely.  I just decided to visit for a while.  Like you, nothing much to do,  same old same old.”

“Uh, well I thought I was in good health… should I get off  … is there about to be some terrible accident … is this a warning or a notification … I mean…”

“So many questions!  Relax, just a courtesy call.  As far as I know.  They never tell me anything anymore, the corporation is really falling apart.  I’m, thinking of going free-lance consultant in a few years.”

It took a moment to digest this rather startling information.  “I thought you had appointments and all that stuff,” she ventured.

“Ah, yes, meeting people in Damascus.  Once upon a time maybe, if someone went off a cliff at high speed I could confidently wait at the bottom.  If their heart stopped,  I was first on the scene.  Now _ well what with air bags and seat belts, who knows?  And I could kill whoever invented defibrillators.  There I am, out of breath, ready for action, and … ‘oh, never mind.’  Drives me crazy.  I tell you, the folks running this whole thing have lost control and vision.  And don’t even talk to me about quality.”

“What about quality?” Janet couldn’t help herself.

“It can’t be maintained with quantity.  They got into a race to the bottom, lowest cost, most souls.  Seven billion people, no time for one here one there: it’s all mass catastrophe, mass murder, mass slaughter, mass plague.  They don’t need me for cleanup, they just bring in the four accountants of the apocalypse with their gigantic trucks and janitor crews.”

“But you were one of the four, weren’t you?”

“Forced retirement, dear.  ‘Losing my touch, served honorably, time for new blood.’  I have a stupid gold watch, somewhere,” he fumbled in his robe and a skeletal hand brought out a Philippe Patek.  “Lot of need I have for a watch,” he muttered.

“So what do you do now,” she asked.

“What everybody else in my position does, I guess,” he growled.  “I take the train to the city when I’m bored, catch up on what the four assholes are doing with the world by watching CNN, go on trips and see what I can of the tourist sights, catch up on my reading.  Not much of a family, you know, never really had the time.”  He glanced at the watch.  “Ah, look at that, I have to get off here …” Mineola, the stop was Mineola.  “Possible business with somebody important, might just die of a heart attack, if I’m lucky.  Can’t count on it, though.  Anyway, nice talking to you.  See you sometime…” he waved vaguely and got off, the sounds of the normal commute rushed back in.

“Don’t hurry,” she whispered fervently, as the person sitting next to her glanced at the interruption and then went on looking at his cellphone.
-

Internally most of us never believe in our external age.  The young feel old and mature, the mature think they are young and flexible.  An old person often feels he has woken up into a nightmare where someone has switched bodies and minds while he was sleeping.  Alas, it is all true.  We can fight it, we can ignore it, we can hope it goes away _ but the clock relentlessly ticks on.

I most pity those who are desperately trying to now accomplish what they should have done at a more appropriate year.  Those middle aged folks who denied them selves an adolescence or who worked drearily through what might have been times of adventure.  Nearing them in those I feel sorry for are those who refuse to give up dreams that were only appropriate when they were different people _ like aging athletes who do not realize their abilities have decayed and their glory season is past.  Life is constant adjustment, and those who do not make adjustments are doomed to constant unhappiness.

So, I mostly try to act my age, although I have as many moments of fantasy as anyone else.  The joy comes in discovering exactly what acting my age might imply, and embracing fully those parts I think seem the most fun.