Aging

Is 53 as ancient as Gary Kamiya makes it sound?

Lately I've been asking myself: When did I get so damn old?

Will it be on Saturday, when my son graduates from high school? Did it start 10 years ago, when my knees gave out and I had to say goodbye to sports other than bocce ball? Was it last week, when I saw my reflection before I was ready and was shocked by the man with thinning hair and white in his beard who looked back at me? Was it five years ago, when a doorman in Copenhagen stopped me as I was about to walk into a club filled with 20-somethings with the soul-shriveling words, "There's nothing for you here, sir"? Or did it start decades ago, a long defeat measured in fears not overcome, things not said?

I turn 42 in a few weeks, and the only significance I attach to the event is that it will provide me with an opportunity to get away for a few days with my wife. We're going to stay in a hotel we love, sleep late, swim, and eat fantastic meals in the hotel's four-star restaurant. Barring some life-altering (or life-ending) catastrophe, when I turn 53, I plan to celebrate (yes, celebrate) my birthday in much the same way. I suppose it's possible that I will be feeling the breath of the Angel of Death on my kneck when I am in my early fifties, but technically speaking, you're dying from the moment you're born. And, of course, the gradual winding down of your body's usefulness is by no means the only hazard to your health. Children die every day of cancer, or from abuse and neglect, or in car wrecks, or by accidental poisoning. Teenagers get shot, or succumb to fatal aneurysms, or starve themselves to death. Young women die in childbirth and in airplane crashes. Men have heart attacks, or develop lethal addictions to drugs and alcohol, or get eaten by wild animals. Put another way, stuff happens. Nobody gets out of here alive, so you might as well make the best of the time you have.

I don't know when Gary Kamiya got old. If I had to guess, I'd say it was right around the time that he decided he was old. I know people in their 50s who are working on graduate degrees. Are these people old? They probably don't have another 50 years of productivity to look forward to, but what does that matter? They're still thinking about the future as though they have a place in it.

By contrast, I know people in their 20s and 30s who have already given up on themselves. They have settled into careers they don't particularly like. They have settled for relationships with people who drain the life out of them and don't encourage them to be the best they can be. They spend their time reminiscing about how great high school and college were, and how awful the real world is in comparison to their teenaged glory days. What good is the future to such people, no matter how much time they have left, statistically speaking?

Gary says he turned a corner in life when he was 48, and "a doorman in Copenhagen stopped me as I was about to walk into a club filled with 20-somethings with the soul-shriveling words, 'There's nothing for you here, sir'". It seems to me he should have turned that particular corner at least 18 years earlier. That doorman's words shouldn't have made him feel old. They should have made him feel silly. You can grow up without growing "old."

As I conclude the 42nd year of my life, I have to admit that I am not as fit, to pick just one measure, as I was ten years ago. But you know what? I'm more fit than I was five years ago. I don't run and swim and lift weights to keep from aging. That would be futile. I do those things to remain fit and healthy, so that as I age, I will feel good. Feeling good counts for a lot. It enhances your enjoyment of all the other blessings in life. Growing older is actually one of those blessings.

When I turned 40, a lot of people asked me how it felt. The only response I could come up with was, "it feels better than dying at 39."

That, I suppose, really sums up my view on getting older: it beats the alternative.