The 5 worst things about getting older
John Hawkins has a piece at PJ Media entitled “The 5 Worst Things About Getting Older.” It caught my eye for obvious reasons, but as with many such articles I started chuckling right at the start on learning that Hawkins is in his 40s.
Ha! You call that “getting older”? Just you wait, young man, just you wait.
Of course I remember turning 40 and thinking it was a big transition. And it is. And of course it’s getting older—every day we all get older, unless the first name is Peter and the second name is Pan.
But I never really thought of forty as anywhere near getting particularly old. And I suppose that people in their 80s and 90s would think of the age I’ve reached (which will remain specified here, although anyone who follows my blog can kinda figure it out) is not especially old, either. But it’s edging up there even in the objective sense.
My 5 worst things about getting old are somewhat different from Hawkins’, as one might expect. Some are the same, however, and one in particular—loss, which is Hawkins’ #2—looms large. I’ve lost not just parents, but I’ve lost many contemporaries, including some near and dear.
That, I did not expect at this age, and it’s a loss I feel almost constantly. I understand the statistics that dictate this will start to happen and then accelerate until we’ve all shuffled off, not just to Buffalo but off this mortal coil. I get it. But like Edna St. Vincent Millay, I am not resigned, although I know this is the normal way of the universe, as the beautiful poetry of Ecclesiastes reminds me.
Hawkins’ #1 is “physical deterioration.” What do most 40-somethings know of that, compared to several decades later? Well, for me, my forties were actually a very rough time physically, because that was the main decade of my extreme chronic pain from several injuries, and I had great difficulty functioning at all. So now, whatever generalized deterioration I’ve undergone, I’m nevertheless in a lot less pain than I was back then, for which I’m tremendously grateful. But I realize that my particular trajectory was unusual, and I also have no idea what lies ahead for me.
Hawkins #3 is “looking old.” At forty I looked very young, not much different than I had at twenty. I noticed that most people my age looked pretty young, too. I continued to look very young at fifty, and that wasn’t so unusual either. But somewhere along the line—although fortunately how old I look hasn’t caught up with my real age—I started looking considerably older. It may not be so apparent in the carefully-chosen photo for this blog (and that apple comes in handy to hide this and that), but in real life I don’t look twenty anymore. I probably don’t even look fifty anymore. However, I’m not too upset about that aspect of things, for whatever reason, although I completely understand people who are.
Number four for Hawkins is “Achieving your dreams and NOT achieving your dreams.” Hmmm. That’s a hard one for me. The biggest dreams I achieved are having a child (I had some fertility problems, so it wasn’t all that easy) and becoming a writer. But there are a lot of unfufilled ones that may never be achieved, and I still struggle with that. One of them involves the end of my marriage, which I never wanted to happen but which unfortunately was absolutely necessary. So that 50th wedding anniversary ain’t gonna happen.
Number 5, “dwindling excitement,” I don’t quite see as that big a deal (I can’t get all the excited about it), although I acknowledge it as a general trend. But I can still get pretty darn excited about some random things, such as seeing my son (who lives far away) or going to a favorite play or ballet (something that happens less often these days), or viewing some wonderful sight of nature or art. And I’m pretty sure I’d be mega-excited if I ever became a grandparent.
So maybe my list isn’t all that different from that of the 40-something Hawkins, except for that #5. Instead of “dwindling excitement” I might say something like “the shadow of the valley of the shadow of death,” although I don’t want to be too morbid. But how can one avoid the realization that, although none of us knows how long we have left, the older we are the more we know that the number of remaining days is diminishing?
I mentioned Ecclesiastes here. So I think I’ll close with a passage from it:
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.
And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
I agree with him on losing friends. I am 80 and in good health. I recently quit my last job and am now completely retired for the first time since I was in 4th grade and had a newspaper route. I have grown children and grandchildren but only from my two sons. My three daughters are unmarried. Two are young enough to do so yet, but I don’t know about grandchildren from them.
One thing that is a plus is that I will not have to live through the coming economic crisis, which I expect in about ten years. Maybe it could be headed off if Trump can remake the GOP but I am not optimistic. Meanwhile, I am reading Kurt Schlicter’s dystopic novel, “People’s Republic,” which is about a post secession America.
Another, nonfiction, book on that topic is “America 3.0,” which is less dystopian and assumes the schism could be accomplished peacefully.
I read about 5 books simultaneously so it is not all doom and gloom. I have a book in each room and one audio book in the car.
I read this earlier and as someone who is a few months from 50 I probably identified with it more than you.
#3 is not a big deal to me at all as someone who comes from a family where every male over 30 is bald it wasn’t exactly shocking that I was losing my hair in my late twenties and going gray in my thirties. It meant nothing to me really and never has.
#4 also doesn’t really mean much to me either. I honestly don’t spend much time thinking of things like this.
#5 on the other hand is the one that struck a chord with me the most. The holidays used to be so exciting and fun and now they really do nothing for me. Summer is another thing that I used to so look forward to and I still do but not in the same way.
Maybe it’s a case where people look at these things differently as they advance in years. The fact is for me I feel no different, maybe better in some ways, than I did 20 years ago so it’s more the passage of time that hits me.
Summer is another thing that I used to so look forward to and I still do but not in the same way.
This is how I used to spend my summers.
It’s been a few years.
When I was a kid back in the 1960s, the local paper had a column titled “Life Begins at 40.” It was a brave attempt to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that one’s best years were over and the rest was making-do until “Death kindly stopped for [one],” to recycle Emily Dickinson.
The web tells me the author was Robert Lenus Peterson and he lived to 85.
Then there was the 1966 Sinatra hit, “It Was a Very Good Year,” in which the narrator catalogues his female conquests by his age, but past age 35, suddenly it all turns to ashes.
But now the days grow short
Im in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine
From fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs
And it poured sweet and clear
It was a very good year
–Ervin Drake
A century ago one did well to make it past 50 even in developed countries.
The losses are when you really grow up, and it’s very painful. My mother passed away when I was 33. I still miss her every day, thirty-six years later.
I’m 66. I can’t push my body the way I used to and I can tell I’ve lost a step or two when it comes to memory and mental calculation, but otherwise I feel pretty much the same — although happily happier when it comes to happiness.
I’m back in college and that feels fine too except I can’t make friends with the other students as a peer and it’s an entirely different game, not for the better, to chat up the women.
I still get excited about stuff. (I’ve taken up piano again and I’m learning to program a synthesizer.) The main difference I notice is the awareness I don’t have the big blue sky to start a new career or family.
I’m not sure what I can do with the years left, but I’m going to give it a shot.
I’m involuntarily and surprisingly back in the dating game after 2 years. Some of these women on Match look like old ladies! Off my list. I sure don’t feel 61.
My best friend from high school was in a coma for six weeks but made a full recovery.
I feel like I’m a race. The following line from Bonnie Raitt is my motto, “Time is mighty precious when there is less of it to waste.”
But I am optimistic. Clint Eastwood won his first Oscar at age 65 and is still going strong. And as Neo well knows, “I’m a contender.”
I can tell I’ve lost a step or two when it comes to memory and mental calculation,
I’m working on my calculus again after 60 years. I was an engineer before medical school. Maybe I can recycle.
neo: Have you run into Rauch’s “The Happiness Curve”?
Academics have found increasing evidence that happiness through adulthood is U-shaped – life satisfaction falls in our 20s and 30s, then hits a trough in our late 40s before increasing until our 80s.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/may/05/happiness-curve-life-gets-better-after-50-jonathan-rauch
I’d like to think all my self-improvement/therapy/Tony Robbins work brought me out of my long-standing depression, but maybe it was just Rauch’s U-shaped happiness curve.
Likewise Leonard Cohen, who for all his fame and success was seriously depressive. Then one day in his fifties, as I recall from an interview, he threw away his antidepressants and decided he would get better or he wouldn’t. And he did.
Well now, I am in my mid 70’s having had cancer three time, I am in bonus time and I love the fact that I am still alive and able see my grown kids, the youngest, a daughter 40 with a one year old and 6 grandkids with the oldest 21. Living is not easy nor it ever was and I wish my grand children the best as they deal with the world to come. Now I try to enjoy what I have and I am lucky enough to look all right, I can do most of what I need to do except heavy lifting.
I am at the age when I look at my email list with dead friends and every few years clean off my cell phone list with those who have passed on. With all the crazy crap, as my leftie brother-in-law says, we don’t have much skin in the game now so why worry too much, it really doesn’t matter.
My goal is to spend my remaining years living well, the past week four days at the shooting range. Cooking great meals for my wife, Texas gulf shrimp caught last night, boiled in spices, chilled and severed with chilled asparagus done in lemon, garlic, butter served with Yorkshire chipotle, cranberry cheese, rosemary crackers, wasabi soy, horseradish red sauce and lemon basil butter. along with a decent Chardonnay. That is the stuff that needs my attention at my age.
Those younger than me need to get to work and figure out their own stuff.
1. Dementia
2. Parkinson’s
3. Diabetes
4. Sleep disorders
5. Excess weight
Having just turned 83, means I’ll soon be an old man.
Long term planning doesn’t mean the same as it used to and my memory that isn’t quite what it used to be, but other than less physical ability, I don’t feel that much different.
OldTexan:
I’m coming down for dinner!
Regarding the assertion in Ecclesiastes that, “there is no new thing under the sun”… That little jaunt by Orville and Wilbur Wright threw that previously believed truism into profound doubt. And Neil Armstrong’s “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” trumpeted its death. When Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the moon it put that that disproven idea into its grave. The truly new may indeed be rare but reality continues to occasionally astonish.
At 70, I continue to find that every age offers something in compensation for my decreased physical abilities. An increase in wisdom and a maturing perspective are treasures not to be cavalierly dismissed.
The feeling of getting older is a fraught one that can control your life.
There was a time when I was the youngest, because most of my peers were college graduates, and I left after two years.
Then, somehow I found myself to be the old hand. How did that happen?
So, when I was a neophythe airline pilot at age 50, surrounded by younger folk, I started to feel old. Many years later, I now realize that I wasn’t.
At 65 I was really starting to feel old because I was eligible for government “old age” benefits. This attitude was offset to a degree when I stirred myself to go on the river, or to mountain streams to fish.
The 70s were sort of up and down, but I was clearly aging in my own mind.
At 80, after a bout with AFIB and Heart failure, it dawned on me that I was wasting time by feeling old. The answer was to keep moving.
Now, at 83 I don’t really think too much about age on a day in and day out basis. I am aware, of course, that the horizons are nearer, and time is finite. I accept that aches and pains are now part of the equation, and signify nothing. I know that there are limitations, and I acknowledge them; but try not to let them control. As I leave my bed at 0430 and head for the bay with my fishing kayak loaded from the night before; I am thankful that I am not as old as I thought I was a decade or so ago.
What I am trying to convey is this; don’t feel old prematurely, as I did. Don’t let calendar years govern your life while you have a choice.
I’m working on my calculus again after 60 years. I was an engineer before medical school. Maybe I can recycle.
MikeK: I’m plenty impressed with your comments here. I’m sure you can!
Be sure to check out, if you haven’t, the MIT online calculus course (1801) with Prof. David Jerison. He gives a great lecture.
Sadly, working my way through his course wasn’t enough to prepare me for Calculus 3 (Multivariable) last summer at UNM. I hadn’t worked under time pressure and the summer course grade was based entirely on quizzes and exams.
And because it was summer, the course was compressed into 8 weeks instead of 13, which meant I had little time to drill as well as learn new material. I understood but couldn’t execute in the time allotted.
I failed with a D+. But as I see it, that’s not bad for a senior who bluffed his way into advanced calculus. Afterward I discovered most of the kids in my class had failed it before. Now I’m doing calculus everyday and, like MacArthur, I shall return and get a B or better.
What I am trying to convey is this; don’t feel old prematurely, as I did. Don’t let calendar years govern your life while you have a choice.
Oldflyer: Great stuff. Thanks.
Don’t stop at chapter 1 Neo…Chapter 3! right after the Birds’ Song… 😉
3:9 What do people really get for all their hard work? 10 I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. 11 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. 12 So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. 13 And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.
14 And I know that whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God’s purpose is that people should fear him. 15 What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again.
Oh…nearing 60…
I hate that the silly stuff I did 20-40 years ago hurts now…blessed knees!
But I wouldn’t have it any different. I enjoy my growing children & my wonderful wife who seems more wonderful with each day. 30 years this year…I am aiming to match my parents for 60 years and then some…we’ll see what gifts God has in the intervening years to enjoy.
My goal is to spend my remaining years living well, the past week four days at the shooting range
Tucson has nice shooting ranges. My wife is still chicken at shooting the AR 15.
I had my nephew out from Chicago last spring and he and his son loved the shooting range.
Huxley, thanks for the tip on Calculus.
In my youth, 40 seemed quite aged.
But when I got there, that birthday was nothing special.
Fifty “felt” different though.
I’ll be 66 pretty soon. Life is good in so many ways, and I have so very much to be thankful for. One of the joys of making music your art is the ability to keep doing it until you just about drop, so that is my goal. Just got in from the first of many coming Christmas concerts, and I’m lucky enough to be able to do this with my wife.
After 35 years away from it, I’m teaching secondary schoolers music as a volunteer, and get to teach some of the children (and soon the grandchildren) of the kids I taught 35 years ago. Without kids or grands of my own, this really fills a gap in my life I hadn’t anticipated having. I collect, restore, and redistribute (sell or give away) clarinets and have learned a lot about myself and the history of the past century in doing so. You find some lost sad thing that was dumped at Goodwill by the family cleaning out the house, and restore it to a gem that some youngster is proud to own and make good music with.
It’s good to have a goal. I’m just going to keep this up as long as it works.
The worst thing about getting older for me has been the loss of family and friends. I have a younger brother and two cousins who are still alive. All my other extended family of my generation have passed. I have also been close to 20 of the 29 classmates that I graduated from high school with. We stayed in touch down through the years, but only three of us are still alive. I still correspond with a shrinking number of squadron mates from the Vietnam days. Too many of them have died in the last few years.
At 83 I thought I was doing very well. Still going to the gym and pumping iron pretty hard. Still traveling enthusiastically. Still taking an interest in politics and learning new things. I thought I might live to 90 or beyond. Then I developed colon cancer. I came out of that operation and was pronounced cancer free, but developed and incisional hernia that had to be repaired. During the recovery in hospital from that operation I contracted C-dif. For ten days I was more dead than alive but somehow made it. After that ordeal I was very weak and noticed that my eyesight had noticeably deteriorated. I figured it was cataracts. The cataract specialist diagnosed wet macular degeneration. That is being treated and the degeneration has slowed but my eyesight is compromised. Thank goodness that I can enlarge the print on the computer. and my kindle. Otherwise I could not read or comment.
Following all my medical problems I was very weak and without much endurance. I figured it was the way it would be until the end. Fortunately, I have slowly regained some strength and endurance, though I’m physically a shell of the man I was three years ago. My grandfather once told me that old age isn’t for sissies. I now know what he meant.
The greatest thing about growing old has been my wife’s company and love. For the 38 years that I was a Navy and airline pilot, I was gone a lot. She was able to hold down the home front, being both mother and father while I was away, and never complained. She is an independent, fearless woman with great good sense. Since I retired at age 60, we have built three houses together, traveled widely, and thoroughly enjoyed one another’s company. She is a year younger than me and has some health issues but will certainly outlive me (her family is long lived). I hope so, I would be terribly lonely without her.
I look to Max Erhmann’s Desiderata for wisdom in my dotage: “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth…………..And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”
Also, from Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t worry, be happy.”
I nearly died the moring of September 1, 2018. It’s pretty sobering when the hospital has you scheduled for Last Rites — and the attending physicial greets you with: “Why aren’t you dead?”
[She was in total shock. Hence the lack of bedside manner.]
Lisinopril nearly did me in. Yeah, I’m allergic to it.
The experience is as close as anyone can get to a crucifixion. The only things missing: Romans, nails and cross. The pain level is an eleven on a scale of 1-10. This goes on for six hyper-intense hours.
Such an event does mess with the mind; so I now have wonderful PTSD events.
For me the Big Bummer: obvious mental decline, obvious physical decline and a very troubling tic: I tend to predict the future. Nasty, it is.
My one compensation: I’m drafting a history of the last 15 millennia. I found the Forbidden Fruit, Tower of Babel, Atlantis, the actual path of Exodus,… and much, much more. If only I can stop polishing it.
Feed back would be appreciated… heh.
For me, the physical declines are still minimal at age 52, but I work hard at maintaining it. I am slowly losing strength, but at a rate that doesn’t particularly worry me given where I started from and the extent so far. I have aged better than most of the people I grew up with. On the mental side, I am still very sharp, and if I have lost anything, it is the ability to focus relentlessly on anything- I get more bored easily than I did when I was younger.
The losses are starting to pile up, though. Cousins I grew up with are dying, all of my grandparents are now dead, and so is my father who died in August. This is the thing about aging I dreaded the most, and it coming truer every day.
When I turned 40 I wanted to be as physically active at 50, and that was true. When I turned 50 I wanted the same at 60. That was only partially true. By 65 I admitted I had lost a few steps. Now at soon to be 72, I remain handsome and clear of mind. Just ask my lovely wife who is a youngster at 70.
For me, the physical declines are still minimal at age 52, but I work hard at maintaining it. I am slowly losing strength, but at a rate that doesn’t particularly worry me given where I started from and the extent so far. I have aged better than most of the people I grew up with. On the mental side, I am still very sharp,
I’ve still got hair. Which bothers my brother.
I find at 77 that my memory is getting better every year as I remember more and more things that never happened. My youth is a lot more fun to remember now than it was then.
The only time I get depressed is when I have to fill out all the forms at the doctor’s office that just seem to dwell on it. After they finish listing all the signs and forms of depression i wonder how normal I am not having any of them.
When I was teaching junior high math after retiring from the Air Force I had a sign on my wall that said “The only people that are really bored are the people that are really boring.”
I live by two sayings that have really had a significant effect on me:
“You can substantially increase your freedom if you only stop endowing things with the spurious attractiveness needed to make pursuing them worth the trouble. Few things are worth doing as well as they can be done.”
“Just because great is better than good, it doesn’t mean that good is bad.”
Remembering them gives me a lot more free time to do what I want and also seriously reduce the stress in my life.
At 61 I’m healthy and physically fit, more so than when I was in my late 30’s and early 40’s. I can no longer run as fast or as long as I once did, but don’t really want to. The most difficult thing I have to deal with these days is what will I do next. Several friends and colleagues have retired the last couple of years. I work in an industry populated by young people (average age at my employer is low 30’s) and so the end is in sight. I don’t want to do what my retired friends do, but haven’t figured out what that will be for me. I suppose when I figure it out I’ll stop what I’m currently doing and focus on the new thing.
The hardest part of getting older for me has been witnessing the passing of family and friends. Of my generation it was my youngest brother that passed first. I’ve since lost cousins, parents, aunts & uncles. A good friend from work dropped dead last May from a heart attack. I’ve thought of him a lot since. His passing has led me to cherish my time and family more than ever.
In the end I guess I’d just say getting older has its challenges, but it is better than the alternative!
I guess how you feel about getting old depends a lot on what happened to you on the way there.
Being told at an early age there is a chance you might be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of your life is depressing.
Then spending the next 40 years – and counting – walking on your own gives one a certain perspective. If nothing else it impresses the hell out of your personal trainer. :-}
Loss is one of the top two.
The other one is not achieving a single dream. I pretty much hate my life and try not to think to much about it. If I think to much about it, I’ll realize how miserable I am. If I just get up and go to work every day, I don’t have time to think about how badly I screwed up.
Lee, I would wager almost all of us feel like we screwed it up in the sense that almost all of us would have managed our time better in the past if we could go back and change it.
I’m back in college and that feels fine too except I can’t make friends with the other students as a peer and it’s an entirely different game, not for the better, to chat up the women.
I went back at 55 after recovering from a 14 hour back surgery that required me to retire from surgery. It was interesting and I learned some new skills, like the use of statistical software. I thought it would be a new career that did not require standing and bending forward, as surgery did.
Later, after returning to California,. I took some Computer Science courses at the local junior college, which had a very good department. I found that the classroom was jammed at the start of the semester but by midterms, there would be about half and by the finals, about six of us. Of the six, four or five would be over 50.
Unfortunately, my new career of measuring quality in healthcare never got going as no one was interested in quality. I ended up teaching medical students for 15 years. I finally quit that after three years of frustration with the electronic healthcare record.
I don’t know what happened to the ID file but it is Mike K
My older brother would have celebrated his 83rd birthday today except for a failing heart 15 months ago. We both read Neo Neocon daily and commented to each other by email on things we saw here.
His passing left me the last of my nuclear family, and I now find myself thinking frequently about when I too might pass. As many commenters above have already noted, that is a pointless line of thought. I remind myself of this truth regularly, but like the old challenge to “count from one to ten without thinking about a rabbit,” the admonition not to think about my own demise only reminds me.
In the mean time I enjoy doing what I can, volunteering to teach Civil Air Patrol cadets how to fly, writing op-eds for the local papers, shooting and fishing when I can. If the weather cooperates in three days I shall spend a day pursuing Lahontan cutthroat trout on Pyramid Lake.
All three daughters are well established in their own life and career and we get to see the grand kids once a year or more. That is the real joy in our lives after nearly 53 years of marriage.
Having lived and worked all over the world has made me appreciate more than most Americans the genius that went into designing our system of government. I regularly give thanks for what our founding fathers gave us. Alas, I must say that while our government might be impressively designed, it tends to be run by a bunch of greedy miscreants with little appreciation for the gravity of their short-sightedness. I pray daily, Neo, that some of them will find the red pill you did.
Thank you, Neo, for the thoughtfulness you put into your posts, and thank you, commenters, for bringing new and often fun insights into your comments.
Holiday greetings to all.
Wow. Lots of great commentary and memories here. (And great advice for a youngster like myself; heck, I’m not even 51 yet!)
Neo, I’m reminded of a wonderful story, I believe about Oliver Wendell Holmes, who into his nineties would go for walks in Washington DC with his friend Justice Cardozo. On one such occasion, as a strikingly beautiful woman passed by, Holmes supposedly said: “Oh, to be seventy again!”
(Similar quotes have been attributed to others, usually for the same reason!)
Alas, I must say that while our government might be impressively designed, it tends to be run by a bunch of greedy miscreants with little appreciation for the gravity of their short-sightedness.
Politics is corrupting and, in my own experience corrupts everyone. I got involved in local politics in the small Orange County city where I lived for 40 years. The city council was made up of a small group of insiders who jealously guarded their clique. An outsider was elected in a sort of protest and was ignored. Then, another outsider was elected by citizens tired of low level corruption. Now, we had 2 of 5 council members who were not part of the clique. Worse, the new woman council member began studying the city check register and asking about items in the open council meetings.
She was shunned by the others who would not speak to her. Worse, they refused to approve any of her appointees to city commissions. I was asked if I would serve on the planning and traffic commissions. I had operated on one of the Council majority and she felt obliged to vote for me so I got approved.
Then a group of city residents formed a committee called The Committee for Responsible Government. That is the story. Anyway, we recruited some squeaky clean candidates for the next election and they got elected.
Then they made new friends, like an LA Times reporter, and turned on us. They adopted all the bad habits of the old group. I was asked to run for City Council and refused. There is nothing new under the sun.
At 64 I’m down to double digits in days until retirement.
Most everything said above, to varying degrees, applies to me, though backing off of sports and other vigorous things is probably what I feel most. A rush to the net and planting my foot (about 6 months ago) and !ping!, I knew cartilage had given way. The meniscus tear has healed but I know now that that was the end for me – that it will likely happen again if I continue as before. If I’m to play now, it will be like those old guys who can hit just fine but they don’t move much. I haven’t yet figured if I’ll make that kind of adjustment or will find other more age appropriate interests.
I’m lucky in my immediate family and cousins that we’ve had no out-of-turn deaths. My own father’s death at age 54 (I was 22) has been the only early death, and it was a big loss for me. I think, though, it gave me a relatively early perspective on life that I appreciate – to be thankful for the things we do have, however imperfect and transitory they can be. This has guided me to what is important since then. A big loss but wisdom gained.
I’m way looking forward to having more time to do things I want to do. I, too, as someone mentions above, have already bought a used calculus book to work through in order to increase my appreciation for this most incredible invention. I have several interests and have book lists and a comfortable chair on the back porch beckoning me – I love, absolutely love, that I’ll soon have the freedom that retirement gives me to follow wherever my interests take me. And towards that end, I’ll be doing my level best to maintain a healthy lifestyle and hope for the best – which I’m hoping gives me 20+ years.
One thing I don’t feel is a decline in my mental faculties. I feel the opposite. Much more is interesting to me as I get older, I think because my knowledge base is ever increasing. Connections across all sorts of different things come to me with that broadening.
F: “Alas, I must say that while our government might be impressively designed, it tends to be run by a bunch of greedy miscreants with little appreciation for the gravity of their short-sightedness. ”
The design is the only reason the miscreants haven’t totally ruined it yet.
MikeK: “They adopted all the bad habits of the old group. I was asked to run for City Council and refused. There is nothing new under the sun.”
My mother’s hobby in her sunset years was harassing the city council, as she had been a resident of our hometown since shortly after being born, had taught most of their parents, themselves, and their children in Junior High, and was not at all abashed by controversy, although she was always very civil about it.
She kept her Pastor in line too.
M Williams: “I have several interests and have book lists and a comfortable chair on the back porch beckoning me”
So many books, so little time…..
Notes to all retirees & soon-to-be: a good friend of ours mentioned once that, when he retired, he worked very hard at staying busy, because so many of his compatriots who had looked forward to doing nothing but sitting on the porch had heart attacks within a few years and passed on. (no prediction intended MW!)
My mother (then 15 years a widow) got busy with family history when she retired from teaching, and compiled a monograph about a small village that was kind of a “suburb” of our quite small community and had declined to just a name (Seth Ward) and a neighborhood, despite having had a small college (Methodist) in its early days. It was so popular with former residents she had to issue a new improved edition, which was printed and ready to mail just a few weeks before she died (of pneumonia brought on by radiation for her lung cancer, which was diagnosed on her 83rd birthday (hah) — be sure and get the pneumo shots if you are in line for the nukes).
Feel good stories about that enterprise: (1) She also had a hobby of “collecting” tombstones (made some interesting pictures), and talked my sister and me into taking her to the large Houston cemetery where the namesake of “her” town, a once-famous minister, was buried. With no detailed map, just a date of death, we stopped in the general area where he was likely to be found, stepped up to the first, very prominent, marker near the curb, and (yes) it was himself. (2) She got lots of calls from people ordering books. On one occasion, when she asked for the name and address, the caller replied, “Seth Ward.” She almost had a heart attack before ascertaining that he was “the third” — grandson of the minister and quite interested in the little, town, although IIRC none of the family ever actually lived there.
She had other hobbies, and was busier after retirement than before. None of us kids could keep up with her.
My mother (then 15 years a widow) got busy with family history when she retired from teaching,
I now have 3500 people in my Ancestry.com family tree. This summer, my wife and I will drive to Illinois (We have plenty of time) and look at some old cemeteries. I may visit the Memphis National Cemetery to see if I can find my great great uncle’s grave. He was wounded on May 22, 1863 in Grant’s last attempt to take Vicksburg by storm. He was sent north to Memphis at night as they had to pass under the Vicksburg guns. He wrote his wife that his wound was in his elbow and not serious but he died in the Gayoso hospital on June 2. The coffins were marked with names but it rained and the names were washed off. The men who died that day were buried as “unknown.” I know his unit and date of death and have some hopes of finding a grave with the unit and date on it.
His brother, also in the union Army, died of measles acquired in camp, which was almost as bad an epidemic as influenza in 1917, and died in St Louis and is buried in the family plot in LaSalle IL. I have been there.
I have William Kennedy’s letters to his wife and some of her poetry, which is quite good and sad. She could never find her husband’s grave.
Mrs. Jane Kennedy
My Husband’s Grave
I’ve shed no tear, I’ve breathed no sigh
Where my husband takes his rest
I’ve never knelt upon the sod
That lies above his breast
He sleeps afar from his lovely home
In a stranger grave alone
And they who say that lowly mound
Repeat the word “Unknown “
Unknown to them his children’s love
That centered all in him
Unknown to them my ceaseless love
Not death itself can dim
Oh could I but have closed his eyes
Received his parting breath
And heard him speak on sad good-bye
Before he slept in death
For me it’s the dull ache of nostalgia. Didn’t fully understand that word until my 60s. Now I long for the simpler carefree days of my youth. Thanks, Neo, for the passage from Ecclesiastes. It’s my favorite book of The Bible.
I am nearing 50. So far my body and mind are doing fine, but I am conscious of the ever-faster passage of time. It’s something like the first hint of chill in a late summer evening: I know the season is changing.
This year marked the first loss of what I would consider a peer. When my very elderly grandparents died years ago, their passing was sad but not tragic or surprising or, seemingly, related at all to my own aging. I was not even 30 when my last grandparent died in her 80s; it just doesn’t relate to you on a personal level. Childless, I have been shielded from one of the classic passing-of-time markers that most people have: watching their children grow from tiny infants to adults in a couple of decades. When everyone in your life is an adult, the passage of time is much slower and less noticeable. People who were my bosses when I started in the workforce are retiring; my parents have gone from older to old. And then, one of our friends died this year. He was one of my husband’s best friends and there was a day when he posted on Facebook, then a day not long after when his brother posted that he had died. And thus, someone I knew and interacted with, who was within years of my own age, had stopped being. That will happen to my parents, to me, to everyone I know. I have always known that, but I think this year is really when I first felt it.
For me, by far, the worst part of aging is the sense of loss. Considering that I have not suffered loss first-hand, it’s really the fear and anticipation of loss, along with the perception of loss. I am old enough that as an individual, I feel like I am years along a hallway with no doors, knowing that the hallway does not lead anywhere that I want to go but also knowing that I don’t have enough time to go back and try a different hallway. It is the perception of the loss of hopes and dreams that everyone has, and almost nobody realizes. If you looked at my life from the outside, you’d probably see me as a success and have no idea that inside I feel like I’m watching a losing chess game play out. It’s the cruelty of knowing the game well enough to see, before anyone else realizes, that my game is lost but not knowing the game well enough to have known, all those moves ago, which one was the wrong one. Actually, I started mourning the loss of my career, my hopes and my dreams, some time ago.
But now, I am starting to also feel the anticipation of loss of the people in my life, because I know it will happen and the acceleration of passing time means that it is coming more and more quickly. Chances are, I wlll outlive my parents but I’m not ready for a moment when my mom isn’t there. Or my husband. But the alternative is going first, and I would suppose that, for example. my now elderly mom would be just as shattered by the thought of a moment when I’m not there. Like countless generations of people before me, I am realizing that the gift of time is to learn that existence is the pain of loss.
But now, I am starting to also feel the anticipation of loss of the people in my life,
We attended the 50th reunion of my medical school class two years ago and the group plans another reunion next year, We don’t want to wait too long. The class president, my best friend in school, is now too ill to attend and joined us by video. He may well be gone by next time. We had a good turnout, about half the class.
I lost so many family members and friends by the time I was 30 that I’m pretty inured to death.
However, I am disturbed that many of my friendships have ended in the last several years. I’m not sure what that’s about. I’m back in therapy to look at it.
Sometimes it seems the older we get, the more we individuate and the more people we filter out.
Now we regular posters here know a lot more about one another, Like Geoffrey Britain is 70 y.o. And more than one of us is a physician.
I am glad, much blessed, to be here after 66 years on insulin, starting at age 10. Saved many lives and eased much suffering in my oncology career, though I made a relatively few harmful errors. Which I acknowledged. One needs humility in medicine, and too many of us think we walk on water.
Yup, i’m slowing down, would like to be 65 again! A quad coronary bypass saved me 5 years ago. I still birdhunt (quail, dove and woodcock), savor the man-dog partnerships in the field, my fine Italian shotguns, and am glad to have a little teen pitter-patter and faint trouser-stirrings when I kiss my new (lady? girl? She has a year on me) friend.
I have been truly blessed. God kept me here for a reason but I am surely not aware what that is, nor entitled to know; perhaps my fairly recent conversion to the Catholic Church counts. To have ignored the Lamb of God, the Church and its teachings all these decades pains and embarrasses smart l’il old me.
I do not fear death, not at all. I hope for a clear mind at the end so I may make my goodbyes to my kids, one of whom is the 4th generation MD in the line, and grandkids; with severe pain, say pancreatic cancer, not too big a price to pay. And to lastly confess my sins one final time, find peace, and cross the Great Divide.
Mike K on December 2, 2018 at 4:15 pm at 4:15 pm said:
“I have William Kennedy’s letters to his wife and some of her poetry, which is quite good and sad. She could never find her husband’s grave.”
Thank you for sharing the poem; it was very poignant.
In re losing friends and family as we age:
I agree that the marker of mortality serves to date our decline, but several of my close college friends died not long after graduation, and the husband of one of my HS friends passed away while we were still in our 50s; I think I’ve been kind of anesthetized on that front.
This is a great thread. My Dad, a good, wise, man has been dead for 25 years. Although I’m 52 and have gained my own personal kind of wisdom, I find myself really drawn to the wisdom of older, experienced men.
I could read this all week. Thanks fellas.
I am 70 years old. My two cats are five and six years old. Will they outlive me?
I have to agree with Brian on this: I could read this all week. I have already returned to it several times to see if anyone new has posted, and to re-read some of the most moving previous posts.
Thanks to all who have shared.
We just started watching the Kominsky Method on Netflix. It’s a great way to laugh and cry at old age with Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin as the main characters. I highly recommend it as it seems to touch all the bases in Neo’s original post.
“The other one is not achieving a single dream. I pretty much hate my life and try not to think to much about it.” [Lee @ 12/2 11:38 am]
Lee,
Just because we haven’t achieved the goals of our youth does not mean we have failed. When my son was in his mid-teens he played baseball for a traveling team. One year they played a team that traveled down from Missassauga (Ontario). The Canadian kids were wonderfully nice, but poor baseball players. My son’s team, even though they were not a stellar team, was scoring multiple runs in each inning against the Canadians. In speaking to one of the Canadian players after several innings, he told us that they had changed their goal; their goal was no longer to win the game, because they knew they simply could not do that. Rather their new goal was to limit (ideally to zero) the runs my son’s team could score in any given inning.
Sometimes the goals we plan are not the goals we achieve. After all most people who dream of being an astronaut or president will be disappointed. I’ll bet if you looked at you life carefully you would find imminent value there waiting for your discovery and appreciation.
“. . . I would wager almost all of us feel like we screwed it up in the sense that almost all of us would have managed our time better in the past if we could go back and change it.” [Yancey Ward @ 12/2 12:19 pm]
Yancey Ward,
I have grappled with this question, too, as I’m sure most of us have. I have to say that with the exception of the loss of my oldest son, I would be hard pressed to do anything differently. I say this not because I believe I’ve done everything so well (I haven’t) but because to alter that past in any way would put me in a different place, a different life, than I currently have. And I have to tell you, I am phenomenally happy with my life. I have children of whom my wife and are are incredibly proud, not just for their accomplishments, but for the adults they have grown to be. I have grandchildren who show immense promise as they grow. My wife and I are looking to spending our remaining time together. The list goes on.
To change anything in my past, to rectify a “mistake” would probably take me to a place that is not where I am now, So I must resign myself to live with those errors and decisions because good or not so good, they have brought me to here, and that is a very good place to be, indeed.
For Dr. Helen Smith’s take on the Hawkins article see:
https://pjmedia.com/drhelen/being-older-doesnt-have-to-suck/
T on December 3, 2018 at 2:24 pm at 2:24 pm said:
“The other one is not achieving a single dream. I pretty much hate my life and try not to think to much about it.” [Lee @ 12/2 11:38 am]
Lee,
Just because we haven’t achieved the goals of our youth does not mean we have failed. …Sometimes the goals we plan are not the goals we achieve.
* * *
So true.
I haven’t done most of what I planned to do when I left HS for college, and college for profession, and profession for family & church service, and … what comes after that??
The one goal I did achieve was having grandchildren, which was always on my list (kids are the means to the end, but I like mine quite well, as it happens).
But there have been lots of good things along the way, and there’s still time (actualrially speaking) for me to write the book I’ve been drafting for 30 years.
In re reluctance to changing the past, in case things don’t get better, a lot of SF writers have explored that situation.
Given that she almost died a couple of years ago, she is a good source. A friend of mine, a surgeon at UCLA, had his wife develop a cardiac arrest about ten years ago. She had no history and was unloading groceries from her car. Their daughter, about age 10, did CPR on her mother until medics came. She recovered completely, just as Helen Smith did.
Again thinking about mortality, another poem from my great great uncle’s widow.
Mrs. Jane Kennedy December 7th, 1865
I am all alone this evening communing with my god. I’ll take my pen and write down my thoughts and enter them in the lodje(?).
Yet is just four years the evening
Since my husband said good-bye
My heart was well nigh breaking
And the tears were in my eyes
I held his hand in silence
And his eyes were glistening to
“The days I’ve got to leave you
Although I love you so.”
“I hope you’ll not think hard of me
For leaving you behind
I must fight my country’s battle
Now that the calls for men.”
“Three months will soon be over
I’ll see you on furlough
Keep up good courage Jane.”
“Don’t let the children forget me
Nor their love for me grow dim
I need not tell you this
I know what yours has been.”
“I wish the Boys to remember
What has taken me from home
And fight to defend their country
If called upon when men.”
“I know it’s hard to leave you
Re(main) faithful kind and true
My duty’s first to god, my country
And then to you.”
I held his hand in silence
One moment he was gone
With a heart too full for utterance
I was standing there alone.
Those long three months in passing
I counted them over and over
But—oh I’ve counted years since
Until I’ve counted four.
He never came again
How can it come to be
That he fills a soldier’s grave
Far away in Tennessee.
O’ it is sad to think
That one wee cherished so
Should die by rebel hands
In a just cause and true.
Sleep on brave heart—thy work is done
That was given thee to do
He’s finished; God forgive them
They know not what they do.
Thy work is done, yes well done
They reward (?) is on high (?)
Thou hast died a country’s marter(sic)
Tis no vain sacrifice.
(?) with they what had I’ll clasp
In fairer worlds on high
And a happy thought steals over me now
There will be no sad good-bye.
The ? are transcription questions.
In addition to the bad things, there are a lot really good things. I am enjoying the luxury of doing things better than I could before, because I now have the time. For example, home repairs I now do them with a level of craftsmanship I could never do before, because there just wasn’t time. It’s the same with cooking. Even cleaning, I do with a zen-like concentration that produces its own rewards.
My wife does her meditation. But, I do mine in the form making daily chores a work of perfection. A little OCD, I suppose, but having the time to indulge my obsessive-compulsive tendencies is luxury that I never had before.
“. . . meditation. But, I do mine in the form making daily chores a work of perfection.” [Roy Nathanson @ 12:43 pm]
Congratulations Roy!
Late to the (very enlightening) party on this one, and I’m not sure I have any business talking on the subject since, it seems, I’m either the youngest or among the youngest regular commenters on this blog.
Still, at age 37, I have already experienced devastating losses: my mother died when I was 12; my fiancee passed away before we had a chance to get married. All of my grandparents, save one, have passed away. The aunt I was closest to died the same year my fiancee did.
Thankfully, I still have my father and, most essential of all, my younger brother, who is everything to me. Most others have been claimed by the shadow of you-know-who.
So while I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I’m inured to death, I have at least a Master’s degree in knowledge of loss, the grieving process, and how it scars the soul moving forward. Ecclesiastes made sense to me from an early age. Perhaps, in the end, that is what allowed me to grow up well beyond my years and interact with all of you old-timers here!
Which is to say, my soul is, in some sense, rather old. I relate better to most 80 year olds than I do to people my own age (37 is like 27 these days). As someone above me in the comments noted, there really is wisdom that comes simply from enduring life for a long time. Even some of the dumbest, dimmest bulbs cannot help but obtain a piece of it as the decades pass.
As for physical deterioration, while I know I haven’t seen the worst of it yet by any means, I have never been terribly robust, and I’m already a “shell” of what I was in my 20’s. I still look very fit and youthful due to lucky genetics, and aside from some premature receding of the hairline, I’m indistinguishable from a 20 year old. Recently, when I began teaching this past semester over here in China, the first thing the students asked me was my age. When I told them, they gasped in something like shock, whereupon I asked them how old I looked. “18,” they said, surely exaggerating – but you get the picture.
All of this masks an asthmatic, migraine-prone, severe anxiety disorder-suffering, IBD-afflicted insomniac who is grateful to have one day per week where he just feels normal. My knees and joints are shoddy, as is evidenced by my inability to sustain workouts without braces. I’d be more upset about this state of affairs if it weren’t just the next step in a continuous slide down a spectrum I’ve been on since birth. I’ve never really known what it is to be robust, so I don’t experience the decline as anything new or surprising. It sucks, but it’s always sucked.
Dreams? Oh, I’m still a dreamer. As long as I have my writing, that will never change. I will never get tenure – feh. I will never get respect from my academic peers for my work – couldn’t care less. As T noted above, adaptability and a steady focus on what you *can* control is essential to keeping the light shining. I can control whether I write or not and whether my writing meets *my* standards – or not. No one can take that from me except the reaper himself. Speaking for myself, the key to purposiveness is finding something that is yours alone which cannot be stolen, infringed, alienated, or thwarted except by you alone. This thing will be connected to the inner light, which is connected to the eternal light. When the direction of the soul is pointed there, you can’t really go wrong, even if you don’t always go right.
Again, with the caveat that I am only 37, I rather like getting older because of the mental and spiritual maturity that comes with it. I look back on the utter moron I was as a teenager and wouldn’t go back to that state if I could. What a nightmare! Burning, raging hormones; learning that could fit in a thimble; misguided valuations of worldly vs. eternal things; insecurities, vanities, you name it. Ecclesiastes may have made sense to me, but not because of anything I did – I just happened to have known the destiny of our lot from unfortunate early losses. Otherwise, I knew squat and understood less.
No thank you.
The sadness, pain, loss, and nostalgia are real, but even they are seasoned with a certain resigned calm that leaves them tasting at least bittersweet. I won’t lie and say I feel this way *every* day, but an overall mood of being more or less at peace with things is an inestimable blessing. It makes everything *cleaner:* thoughts, feelings, actions, goals. Clean. Polished. Simpler. It takes a lot of muddying from the dirt that life kicks up to purify the heart. Clean and simple is a state that is earned, a way of being that I wouldn’t trade for all the youth in the world. It’s also an irony I marvel at more with each passing year, that in youth, when the heart is so innocent and inexperienced, the raging torrent of information, newness, feelings, and an open, seemingly limitless horizon actually leads to a confused and complicated inner life, with very little that is unequivocal, whereas in old age, when the soul is so heavy with loss and burden, the result is something more straightforward, no-nonsense, and, well, *clean.*
Anyway, thank you all for sharing your experiences – it’s been an education.
kolnai:
I think that your soul comes shining through in your writing.
I’m sorry you’re plagued by so many physical problems at such a young age. In my early forties (as I wrote in this post) I had very serious chronic pain for more than a decade, and yet it’s a lot better now, so perhaps there’s hope.
I, too, had quite a few relatives die when I was very very young. I do think it changes people and gives them a different perspective. But I also think it only does that to people who are already somewhat contemplative and “different” to begin with.
And I was surprised that so many regular commenters here are a bit long in the tooth. Perhaps there are a lot of silent young readers out there? Or perhaps not. There actually used to be a few more regular commenters here who were young, and I think some of them are still reading but more silent as commenters than they used to be.
Neo –
Yeah, I was more than surprised at the age of some of the people I’ve interacted with and read daily in the comments here. I had a sense that I was the young’un, of course, but I was thinking of elders in their late fifties and sixties. I’m astonished (and impressed) by the number of people here in their eighties.
“Impressed” because, truthfully, I’ve never been able to envision myself lasting that long, so I instinctively view it as an accomplishment. The active minds and lifestyles of these old folks puts me to shame. It’s awe-inspiring.
With respect to the younger crowd, I don’t remember why, but I always had the impression that blert and gringo were in my broad age bracket (pre-fifties). This might seem funny now, but my sense of Geoffrey Britain was of a robust British man in his forties. I thought art was on the younger side as well (fifties).
When I was growing up, through some combination of a stern disciplinarian upbringing courtesy of my father and a mystification of the adult world and what it meant to be an “Adult” in my own mind, I developed a near inability to speak to my elders as members of the same species as me. Not to say they were lower; on the contrary. I was always waiting for that moment when something would “click” inside of me letting me know that I too was an Adult. Until this moment arrived, all I could see was this: whatever I was, I certainly was not what my father and grandfather were – I was a child.
I’m still waiting for that moment. And bizarrely, I still look at my father and see “Adult,” as I do many (not all) of my elders, at least those in their sixties and up. I’m getting better, but it’s still difficult for me not to revert to treating any old guy I happen to be talking to like an Adult who might as well be my grandfather.
On the one hand, I’m well-mannered. On the other hand, I’m working with a weird pathology in here (*points to his skull*).
Just last month I spent a splendid two days in Jinan with an eminent professor of Assyriology visiting from Israel, and we hit it off so well I felt, by the time he left, as though I loved the man like family, or like an old, reliable mentor and friend. *Still* it was extremely hard for me to suppress my inhibitions and give in to his invitations to converse as an equal.
All of which is to say: it was a good thing I didn’t know the ages of everyone here for a long time. I may have opened up regardless, given the anonymity of the web, but I still think I would have hesitated to state my opinions so forcefully.
Another thing that occurred to me: it’s hard to believe I was barely 30 when I began frequenting this site. Does it make sense to say that, although much has changed in my life since then, somehow, whenever I find myself back here chewing the fat with you and the neo-ites, I feel like nothing has changed, like I’ve returned to a precious, lingering moment preserved in amber. Maybe it’s the fact that my spirit feels at home here, utterly comfortable and free, surrounded by people I’d love to spend eternity conversing with in the afterlife (a feeling of real communion I’ve never had, even in 20 years in academia). I seem to boil down to my essence when I enter these here precincts.
But that by the by.
I have to concur with your judgment that early experience with death tends to be more of a trigger activating already potentially contemplative types than something that flips people outright from, say, extroverted to introverted. It was certainly true in my case – I’ve always been ponderous. Death just accelerated my journey inwards by adding rocket fuel.
Oh, my. Kolnai, thank you so much for sharing all that with us. And also to Neo, for your response to Kolnai.
It is very moving … and makes me feel connected to the others of my species … and proud to be human.
.
Of course, thanks to so many of the commenters to this posting in particular, and the many others as well, for sharing your thoughts and your viewpoints. All of these are points of connection with fellow humans and valuable for that, as well as for the insights and the wisdom and the information.
My best wishes to all.
Kolnai: “Until this moment arrived, all I could see was this: whatever I was, I certainly was not what my father and grandfather were – I was a child.”
A feeling I have had as well. My grandfather (my mother’s father) completed the fifth grade, but was a self-educated man with uncommon good sense and human wisdom. I have never felt I have ever attained the status of wisdom he had.
Like you, I have a sense of the commenters here as being older and wiser than me. (Most aren’t older, but they are wiser.) Also, even though I know Neo is younger, she is, in my mind, an older soul with much to teach to we young’uns. There are so many here who are much better read than me. So many with interesting life experiences. So many with practical knowledge of subjects I know little or nothing about. I often think of Neo’s place as being like a college seminar. Issues and ideas are examined, discussed, and debated. The result for me is that I feel enriched by it all. I feel happy when I can chime in and add my two cents worth, even if that two cents worth is really only a penny’s worth. 🙂
Aging is the universal human experience. It is different for each individual, but we must all face it as best we can. IMO, that’s why this post and comment thread has been meaningful for us. We all need guide posts to help us along the journey and the experiences of others provide those markers.