Aging Out

A story about youth

A few years ago, as he approached ninety, I asked my grandfather how old he felt and without hesitation he said, “same as I did in high school.” This is a man married for sixty-five years with kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, not to mention countless tales of (mis)adventure traveling the world for both business and pleasure—and, yet, he still feels eighteen.

The suffragette Gertrude Nelson Andrews once wrote: “A man at eighty should be a masterpiece.”

I think my grandfather has done well to carve and polish his life into something worth admiring, if only less celebrated than a Monet or Michelangelo. But the art of the way he’s lived has not been lost on his friends and family. He’d be the first to tell you, that’s all that matters in the end, anyway.

With my thirty-seventh birthday on the horizon, I can’t help but contrast the mandate to live a beautiful life with something Benjamin Franklin said: Many people die at twenty-five and aren't buried until they are seventy five. That about sums up the two available paths for us.

Now, I like to believe I’ve got plenty of time to work on the masterpiece, while dodging both the literal and figurative mortician, but the thing is . . . age creeps up on you fast. One day you’re driving around with your buddies on a high-school Friday night, looking for anything to do; next thing you know, your hair is thinning, hangovers last for three days, and there are all these fucking bills to pay.

Reconciling the reality of getting older with the imposter syndrome that so often accompanies it, sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder who the hell is staring back at me: this rather domestic, married father of two who’s held down one job for the better part of a decade—the same person, that is, who rented a dozen different apartments and worked seasonal jobs for the decade before that so as not be “tied down.”

click this picture for some third-party advice

I look back on those times of utter freedom with nostalgia, considering the responsibilities I shoulder now, but the ironic thing is that I also remember yearning to settle down amidst the aimlessness of that time. Which is to say, I’m not convinced you can ever be all-in on one lifestyle—there are just too many possibilities, alternative realities that might just become reality—and, often enough, the change seems to happen without you even realizing it. So what to do?

My late grandmother (the one married to my grandfather for the sixty-five years) always said: life is not a dress rehearsal. It’s sort of become a family motto. There are lots of clichés about living in the present / making the most of life, but I like the dress rehearsal one because it puts us as the actors of our own lives. And just as a good stage actor gains experience—the performance becoming more comfortable, more natural, more provocative—so goes navigating the trials and tribulations of life.

I also like the actor analogy because it allows you to put on whatever age suits the occasion. Business meeting: forty-five. Taking the kids to the zoo: twelve. Going on a date with your wife / husband: twenty-six. And, ultimately, there’s that ever-present age you feel in your head.

For as long as I can remember, my grandfather claimed to be 39 (eighteen must’ve been a little too far-fetched). It was always funny, especially when my parents surpassed that. But as one of the liveliest people I know, I have no doubt there’s something to it.

I guess it’s simple: young at heart starts in the head.

Martin

p.s. how old do you feel?