Casual Observer
Mark Levy
I Like My Present Age the Most
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes walked down a street when he was 90 years old or so and reputedly saw an attractive young woman. Holmes turned to his companion and muttered, wistfully, “Ah, to be eighty again.”
I wonder if I will have the same wish when I get as old as Holmes was. I know a few, much younger people who already are pining for their even younger selves. That helps explain the reason many people are obsessed with looking younger. They wear fashionable clothing and hair styles and they get face lifts and tummy tucks. They listen or try to listen to rap and hip-hop music and use teenage expressions, like “omigod” and “fly girl” and “cheese” and “phat,” spelled with a PH. Now if they have that sort of never-young-enough temperament, they might also wish for younger years when they hit the advanced age of 30.
If they regret reaching, say, the 40-year milestone, how will they feel when they reach each succeeding year or decade? Life must become more and more disappointing to those folks as they age. That’s really too bad. It means they have less to look forward to every day. Where’s the fun in that?
I, on the other hand, enjoy my present age more than I did my age last year. And last year was better than the year before. Now I’m not saying that each of my faculties is better than ever, or that there aren’t more insidious signs of failing health; but I have a better adjusted attitude with each year. I have a better appreciation for how the universe works and how and why people act as they do. Now I also know better how to urge some people to react the way I would prefer, from the cashier at the supermarket to my boss. I still haven’t figured out my wife, but I’m optimistic even about that, as foolish as that sounds.
I’m increasingly empowered with knowledge, and that feeling of self-sufficiency should continue to increase as I live through more events, meet more people and gain more experiences. It’s a shame it will end, but I try not to think about that.
I am free not to have to prepare for events that I now know will never happen. I don’t feel the urgency to rehearse with an air guitar, for example, since the prospect of rock stardom has already passed me by. And I’m not writing and rewriting my acceptance speech anymore for the Oscars or the Nobel Prize ceremony. What a relief. That saves me a great deal of time and, of course, anxiety. Nowadays, the only thing I rewrite is my last will and testament.
I don’t have to practice catching fly balls to right field or get nervous about meeting my teen-aged girl friend’s parents or explain to my own parents why my 8th grade report card in Spanish isn’t as high as they had hoped. I don’t have to stay up half the night trying to remember the capital cities of 50 states or the names of the explorers who discovered each little dinky Latin American country — information that I was pretty sure I would not need in the next 50 years… and I was right.
I spend little time thinking about what I’ll be when I grow up, although I have to admit fleeting thoughts of that still cross my mind on certain Monday mornings.
Besides the obvious advantages of qualifying for senior discounts at the movies, at restaurants and at sporting events, and the deference youngsters pay me occasionally, when all of the seats are taken on the bus, here’s another benefit of being older. Recently, I completed a Master Degree in creative writing. (You might not realize that from these little essays, because they are essentially non-fiction. Let’s face it: you can’t make some of this stuff up.) Anyway, my writing class of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings spent time learning how to think of subjects to write about. I could have skipped those classes, because coming up with new ideas is no problem for me. By now, I’ve experienced all sorts of things that I can write about. I felt sorry for the younger students in my class, who could just imagine events that I had already experienced. It seemed like an unfair advantage for me, in fact.
No, compared to my earlier years, I am completely satisfied with my present age. I just wish I could somehow remember those early years better.