I write this post upon turning 58. To be precise, my 58th birthday is August 9.
This birthday marks a peculiar milestone. I have now reached an age at which I can remember my grandfather.
I passed this milestone with my father decades ago. My parents are only twenty-two years my senior, so I can remember my father at the age of twenty-nine.
But my grandfather? My grandfather was a World War II veteran who experienced the Great Depression. He was truly from a different time.
And yet… my grandfather, born in October 1921, turned 58 in October 1979. I was in the sixth grade then; but I remember late 1979 quite well.
***
This is the point where many people would suggest that fifty or perhaps even sixty (since I’m very close to that milestone too) is the new thirty—or perhaps the new forty. I’ll spare you such bravado. 60 is not the new 30 or the new 40. 60 is 60. And 58 is 58.
That said, I’m relatively fortunate insofar as my health. I’m a lifelong runner and weightlifter, and I’m in reasonably good shape. I’m not going to say that I don’t feel my age at all. But I feel it, I suspect, less than the average man my age.
***
The real problem with reaching this age is not that one feels old, but that the world feels old. I miss times that were more to my liking (even if they were less technologically convenient). I miss many people who are no longer here.
We all eventually reach the stage where the past becomes more important than the future. I suppose I have reached that point. This doesn’t imply a death wish, a state of despair, or a complete indifference to the present or the future.
It does, however, mean that I’ve become a temporal foreigner. I can operate in this era—for the most part—but if I had my choice… I would be somewhere else. Or sometime else.
I suspect that this is part of the normal process of aging. An indifference to the future prepares one for the inevitable day when one will no longer be part of the present. At 58, my journey is more than halfway over. I don’t expect to live to age 116, after all.
I’d like to stretch it out just a little bit longer. But whether that “little bit longer” means three years or 30 years, I’m already grateful. I’ve been blessed with a very good life—better than most.
Wherever you find yourself on your journey, I wish you happy trails, even though it’s my birthday we’re talking about. That’s another thing about being this old. Birthdays are kind of old hat now, too.
-ET