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Over coffee the other day, I was talking with a younger friend (most of my friends these days are younger) and said, “Let me tell you: 80 is not 70.” Like so many of my pronouncements, it sounded good at the time, but when Chuck asked me what I meant, I found myself sinking into the mudflats of my own brilliance.
What did I mean?
When I came home, I found a blog I wrote nearly eight years ago, called “Since 70” [link] in which I talked about my pilgrimage as a septuagenarian: living with my “diminishments”—both physical and mental—struggling with inertia, my changing tastes in food, entertainment, and music, and most of all, my increased awareness of my powerlessness to control people and events.
Well, the diminishments have increased: I’m living with chronic emphysema, my balance is shot, and my skin shreds like tissue paper. I no longer struggle with inertia; I’ve given in to it. To lower my carb intake, I’m eating yogurt instead of muffins, cauliflower rice instead of potatoes, and just about every kind of nut raised on this planet. Technology grows more confusing. I listen to more classical music. I’m still working on acceptance.
None of which is surprising (depressing but not surprising); what surprised me as I read my blog was my impatience with my 70’s self. Several times I thought, “Oh, for crying out loud, Rick, get to the point!” And I realized that one reason 80 is not 70 is that I’m now clearer about what is essential and what is not. I have some 50 hats hanging in my garage; I usually wear one of four. I have five banjos; I play one. I have ten kinds of tea; I drink three.
I don’t know if there’s a connection or not, but life as I know it is more intense. The highs are higher and lows are lower and there are more of both. Recently, when I was walking through the woods and looked up to see a barred owl, my heart hiccuped with joy. An email that afternoon notifying us that a new 100-unit development is probably going up in those woods plunged me into despair. (A lot of the news these days does this to me.)
One of the reasons I’ve had trouble in the past finding what’s essential is because, as my first wife used to say, “Rick, you think too much.” Until I got into my 80’s, I could stand for twenty minutes staring into my closet trying to decide what to wear. I had to set a timer when I played Scrabble or Mary Lee wouldn’t play. Most of the time, though, I was thinking about what people thought of me. When I was with someone, I never really saw them; I saw only the me I thought I saw in their eyes. As for listening, forget it; I was planning what I was going to say next. These days—thank you, Jesus or Al Anon or Father Time—by paying less attention to who I think you think I am, I’ve become more interested in you. I’ve become a better listener.
I find I’m now curious, a word that was never part of my vocabulary. Quantum physics fascinates me. So does the leaf caught in a spider web outside my window. So does my death. As a result, I think, I am far less resentful about what I don’t have and far more appreciative of what I do have.
I spent a lot of my 70s reliving life in a small Maine town during the 1950s, and I’m sure I’ll continue to write about those years. But these days, what’s more important is being here. Right now. Not this decade, not this year, not this week, or even today, but this moment in the day that I’m sitting here alternatively typing on my computer and looking out the window. Maybe that’s why I’m reading and writing more poetry: it’s more immediate, more concerned with moments than memories.
So yes, Chuck, 80 is not 70. Life is not better—for many of us, it can be more painful, lonely, and frightening. But, for me at least, it’s also more interesting, more authentic.
And I’m more grateful for it.
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