On Aging

I turned 65 yesterday.  The march of time is inexorable.  Indeed, it accelerates as one ages and seems ever more elusive.  The metaphor of sand slipping through one’s fingers is apt.  We try to hang on to the good moments, but they fly by and we stare in wide wonder as the years progress.  There are so many tropes about aging, and I am cynical enough to want to avoid embracing them, but certain facts cannot be wished away.

I have read that people are generally happier in their later years, that they seem to be less anxious or frustrated.  Psychologists depict the course of happiness or well-being over one’s lifetime as a U-bend.  We start out relatively happy, reach a nadir sometime in our late forties or early fifties (the notorious mid-life crisis) then make a U-turn and become progressively happier as we enter and roam trance-like through old age.  Of course, like all psychological studies, these results are based on interviews and surveys, with no real scientific measure of happiness.

When older people say they are happier, I wonder if they are simply trying to persuade themselves, knowing that their lives are soon to end and that it would be a pity if they went to the grave with regret.  Or perhaps that form of happiness is an acknowledgement that things could be much worse and that in relative terms one must be grateful for health, sanity and some measure of security.

For me, these later years are a mixed bag.  I am looking forward to the freedom of being retired and I am fortunate to be financially secure and in relatively good health.  My daughters are wonderful people who appear to be in good situations and I am excited about sharing time with them in the coming years.

But I cannot help feeling a certain melancholy about the loss of youth and the ever more rapid approach of life’s end.  It is true that I could live another 20 or 30 years, though I do have a fairly significant vulnerability that could curtail that.  Yet even if I live another 20 or 30 years, it will be as an old person with increasing infirmities and less physical prowess.  The thought of being one of the legions of baby boomers who will be shuffling around various tourist attractions is not one to inspire joy.  There will be so many of us that I would not be surprised if the millennials put a bounty on our heads and start hunting us down for sport.  After all, we will be emptying the coffers of social security and medicare and contributing excessively to global warming with all of our RVs and global travel.

I never went through much of a mid-life crisis, so perhaps I am overdue for a bit of depression.  I am reasonably satisfied with the arc of my life and achievements, and suspicious of any vain regrets about missed opportunities or riches, so I don’t think I will suffer a crisis of ‘if only I had done this or that’.

 

My depression, if it settles in to any degree at all, will be one of being too acutely aware of the fleeting moments of my life and the decay of my physical self.  When I took a hiatus from the business world and spent 3 years as a high school math teacher, I remember thinking that summer vacation would be such an idyllic break.  It was indeed enjoyable, but I recall feeling the weight of the looming ‘back to school’ date and wanting desperately to make each day count.  

I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar presses down upon me in these golden years.  Perhaps it would be wise to make yoga and meditation  my first retirement activity!