on getting older

A coworker of mine will be turning 50 in a few months’ time, and she has been feeling a bit blue about this. It has me thinking about aging and why it’s such a big issue for so many people.

I’m guilty of it—most of us are guilty of it—but I hate when people try minimize other folks’ age-related freakouts. When I turned 30 it hit me a little hard, and I had so many older people roll their eyes and snip, “You think you’re old? Wait until you get to be my age! You’re just a baby!” Well, yes, it’s true that 30 isn’t old, but jeez, aren’t I entitled to feel a bit elderly and freak out for a little while? That said, I do feel a yearning to say the same thing to people who are younger than me and fretting about feeling old, like a coworker who recently felt badly about turning 26. It’d be easy for me tsk-tsk and sigh heavily at what she’s going through, but didn’t I feel the same thing when I hit my mid-twenties? Sure. It’s called a quarterlife crisis, and it’s a known phenomenon.

However, all that “You think you’re old?” crap can actually be advantageous. Whenever I start to feel old, I think about people who are older. And I don’t do it in a mean-spirited way (“Well, at least I’m not a dinosaur like her!”), but in a thoughtful way. I think about how people turning 60, 70, whatever, would probably love the chance to be my age again. Being old is relative, and unless you’re, like, 110 years old, there’s always somebody who is older than you to remind you that you’re lucky. Even a griping 90-year-old can have a 100-year-old say to him, “Oh, I’d give my eyeteeth to be your age again!”

I think what bothers a lot of people about getting older—and this certainly applies to me—is that each age serves as a yardstick for what we think we should have accomplished by that point in time, and it’s hard to avoid holding that yardstick up to our lives. I’m 32, and by now I feel like I should have a house and a spouse, or, if not a spouse, then at least a potential spouse. And a beefier retirement fund than what I’ve currently got.

You know how in high school, most kids fret about what other people think of them? They feel like they’ve got this spotlight piercing down straight upon them. Everybody can see their flaws and mistakes. What they don’t realize is that everybody else—no matter how “perfect” or popular they are—is feeling the same way. And Jane Cheerleader is too busy worrying about what her friends think about her to notice you in the corner, worrying about what she thinks of you. It’s the same thing with this yardstick mentality. I think, “By the time she was my age, so-and-so had a husband, a big house, a successful career, and she was on the road to getting pregnant. I’ve done none of those things.” But who notices that except for me? Who is keeping score? Everybody else is too busy thinking the same thing (“Oh, damn, I should’ve done this and that by now!”) to notice me and what I have failed to do. And for every area in which someone else has bested me by this age, there is an area in which I have bested them. The aforementioned so-and-so does have a great life, but unlike me, she has never once lived on her own. She always had roommates up until the point she got married. She has never had to survive on her own. She has never been to Europe. She has never marched on Washington. Those are all things I have accomplished.

And really, regarding the yardstick mentality, I don’t think that abstract milestones should be universal. They shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. It’s not written anywhere that all people who go to college must graduate by age 23. Some people graduate when they’re 63. It’s not written anywhere that a woman must be dating/married by age 30, and must have at least one child by age 35. Some people never date or marry, and some people never have kids. Some people only have kids at age 45. Some people only get married at 55. We all follow our own path at our own pace. So turning 40 or 50 or 60 shouldn’t be a death knell for all the things we supposedly should have accomplished by that point. There’s still time to do some of those things! And if they don’t get done, oh well.

Youth doesn’t have to get buried when you turn 50. My mom’s life really only began when she turned 50. After her divorce she went from frumpy and harried to fabulous. She made new friends and got into a new relationship. She started a brand-new hobby (ballroom dancing) and now even dances in competitions. Life begins and ends when you let it begin and end—not when the calendar dictates it.

Also, there’s the whole mortality issue. Every birthday makes us think about the passage of time and the looming prospect of death. What we also need to remember is that every day could conceivably serve as a mortality reminder, because every day brings us closer to death. That’s just a fact of life. You don’t need to wait for your birthday to realize, “Wow, I could die at any second.”

Most important of all is this: whenever you feel badly about entering a new decade of your life, remember all the people who never got to live that long. When I turned 30 and pissed and moaned about having to leave my 20s behind (even though they were, for the most part, a crappy decade for me), I thought about all the folks who never lived to see the age of 30. People who died in childhood, or as teenagers, or in their twenties. What would they have given for the opportunity to live long enough to celebrate turning 30, 40, 50, and beyond? So for my coworker who is bothered about turning 50, I have to say to her: Think about it like this: it’s not so much that 50 years have slipped away from you and are lost forever—it’s more that you were lucky enough to experience 50 birthdays, 50 summers, 50 autumns full of vibrant, changing leaves, and so on. Think about how lucky you are to have had that.

My great-aunt, who is in her mid-80s, is dying of cancer. When she was finally diagnosed in the spring, it had spread considerably, and a round of chemo made no difference whatsoever. Her doctor told her that he expected her to die within two months. This woman, who has always been robustly healthy, will not live to see the end of summer. She will never again see another Christmas or birthday or snowfall or flaming red leaf. This summer is the last summer she’s got. Given the choice, of course she’d rather live for another 20 years, but since she doesn’t have that choice, she has made peace with what is happening. No matter how hot it is, she goes outside every day to sit and look at the flowers in the yard. She spends every day with loved ones. She savors every minute.

If I found out that I were dying, and I only had two months to live, I’d think about all the things I wanted to do and never got a chance to do, like go to Antarctica and publish a book. If I only had two months to live, I really wouldn’t have enough time to do those things. But if I lived to age 50, maybe I could. And as she turns 50, my coworker could say the same thing: I haven’t done all the stuff I’ve wanted to do, but presumably—assuming I don’t die, like, tomorrow, I still have time to maybe make some those things happen. People who died at age 18 didn’t have that luxury.

The biggest components of aging that bother many people are the two Ws: wrinkles and white (or gray) hair. Yeah, it sucks, dude—I’m not going to deny that. I don’t know why it sucks (when did it become a badge of shame to show your age?), but it does. I pluck out my white hairs every week, and will most likely start dyeing my hair within the next year or two. I don’t have wrinkles, but I still started using wrinkle cream and anti-ageing moisturizer a few months ago. I used to avoid the sun because I liked having pale skin; these days, it’s because I don’t want age spots and sun-induced wrinkles. Still, I don’t ever want to get cosmetic surgery to stem the tide of time (especially Botox, which is evil because of its horrible impact on animals). I don’t want to look like I’m 30 when I’m 60—I think that’s creepy and unnerving. I want to grow old gracefully, but that might be easier said than done...




song heard most recently before posting: Punky’s Dilemma—Simon & Garfunkel