On Aging

Today I marked 58 years on earth. Actually I didn't mark it. I'm not a "birthday person". If left on my own I would have not known what day it is, I rarely know the date, and often I don't know what day of the week it is. I had to look at my cell phone to get the date when I went to the bank this afternoon. But my parents, kids and wife and some friends remind me every year of my birthday.

It is strange being this old. At 50 I fully realized that in principle I have fewer years left than what I have lived. I'm only twelve years away from the Psalm's biblical "old age" of threescore years and ten. I know twelve years is nothing. The past twelve years of my life have literally been a heartbeat's span. I can mark their beginning from this month when we left the Episcopal Church and embarked on entering the Orthodox Church. Intellectually I know a lot has happened, not just "church stuff" but personal joys, deaths, gains and losses in so many arenas of life. In my mind it is all a small black and white snapshot, a single event captured while in motion, but now still, stark and with too many faces to recall exactly. "Twelve years" are just two words now, not an overwhelming prospect of a long, winding road, whose destination is hidden from view beyond the horizon, a journey stepped off in the inexorable and unrelenting metered cadence of 60 tiny ticks of the clock.

I have lived too many years to recall how things were, what I did when, who I was with and what I said. So I make up some amalgamation of stuff that sounds right and makes the point I'm making, but is usually factually wrong in some way (my wife will attest to the factualness of that.)

In the past couple years, I find I'm using fewer words with people, and sometimes sharper (or blunter) ones than I used 20 years ago.  I'm more direct, not out of a mean spirit, but from some  "old man economics" of communication that has inflicted me.  I'm too old and tired to dance a full tango with someone anymore. I'm not impressed with nor interested in trying to keep up with all the tap dancy-fancy moves in conversations. I just want to get away off the dance floor and back to listening to the music and watching the pretty girls from my table, sipping a nice Scotch, neat... and alone. I now enjoy not talking more than I used to enjoy hearing myself talk. And frankly, sometimes I say stuff just to mess with people just to see how much slack my gray beard buys me. That too is an old man thing, I think.

Speaking of "alone"... Alone is not the "frightening thing hiding under the bed" that it used to be. In fact solitude is welcomed company.  Loneliness and existential distances tortured me, nearly to death several times in my life.  I settled for contact rather than communion, a facade rather than a face, a false acceptance rather than real rejection. My senses are clearer, I can now see a phony smile, hear the flattering lisp and feel the hesitant hug and overly zealous handshake. But my reaction time to what I see has slowed.  I don't have the energy for rabid judgment anymore. Nor do I have the energy or want to take the time to talk myself into pretending things are anything but what they are. I can walk away and not ruminate over it in the darkness of the early morning. I prefer to be alone than with a false companion.  I don't know if this is a gift for old men, but there is freedom in this.

When you get old its harder to avoid self assessment. The fruit of your life by this time has ripened. Some is sweet, some is inedible and shouldn't be passed on. I know I've ruined a lot of things in 58 years. Damage control is no longer making excuses and pointing at others' failures for my screwing up. An old man knows there is no such thing as damage control, only damage identification and admission of guilt. I've been weak and narcissistic. There's a lot of people close to me that will tell you that, people important to me. I am finally able to listen to them. A sweet fruit of life is having close people who will tell you the truth. There is freedom in this too.

At 58 I'm too tired these days to be inconsistent. I used to be a human chameleon, blending with the surroundings, fitting in with the environment, changing nuances of shades of color to trick the onlooker into thinking I belonged there.  I find I don't change much to blend in or fit in anymore. Where ever I find myself, I am just an old bearded lizard.  I don't know if an old chameleon loses its ability to change color or if it just doesn't care anymore... which ever it is, it is a lot less effort and makes life actually more colorful.

And right now, I'm just tired. I had a days' work. Good friends took me out for my birthday, I had two glasses of wine and it is past my bedtime. If I knew 58 was going to be like this, I'd have done it much sooner. So, with that, goodnight all.