Staying young at heart requires taking on new challenges.
Staying young at heart requires taking on new challenges, ones that test you as much as the challenges you have now mastered tested you at an earlier stage of life.
We look back at youth as an idyllic time because we have a clear recollection of the ways in which it is easy to be young and a foggy recollection of the ways in which it is hard. We think: “If only I had the energy I had then.” Or: “If only I weighed what I weighed then.” Or: “If only I had the good health I had then.” We don’t often think: “If only I were as uncertain of myself as I was then.” Or: “If only I knew as little about how the world really works as I knew then.” Or: ”If only I had as little judgment as I had then.”
The best that those of us trying to hold onto a bit of our youth can do is to hold onto the sense of excitement that comes from facing a challenge and overcoming it. It’s got to be a real challenge, one appropriate for our age. At 15, it might have been a challenge to ask a girl to dance, or to show someone an essay you wrote, or to perform at a piano recital. Those won’t do for most 55-year-olds (there are exceptions to that statement, to be sure). An appropriate challenge for a 55-year-old might be finally to make peace with her sister, or to get serious about photography, not for money now but just as a hobby, or to agree to play the organ at church even though it would be the softer and easier path to say that you are too busy.
If you stop running regularly, you get to a point where all you can do is walk. If you stop walking regularly, you get to a point where all you can do is sit. If you stop pursuing goals that are hard, you get to a point where you don’t see much point in being alive anymore. That’s old and tired thinking.
Staying young at heart requires coming to terms with death.
Accept death, and you’ve got life beat.
I’m not morose. I don’t think about death all the time. I do think about it, though. I think about death in about the way I thought about financial freedom at age 35. I see it as the focus of the next big project on the horizon. I don’t expect to die anytime real soon. I would like to be ready, just in case. And I would like to come to terms with death long before it becomes a pressing everyday concern.
I think everyone should do this. It is part of what is involved in living on purpose. If you really and truly believe in God and heaven, death should not be such a big deal. Letting it in that it is not such a big deal should help you in your effort at staying young at heart. I can’t speak as well on behalf of those who do not believe in God and heaven, but my thought is that the same is true for them to at least some extent. If you really and truly believe that it all ends when they bury you, then death is at least not such a horrible thing — it’s going to sleep, not going to the fires. Again, though, you need to really and truly believe in this view of what happens at death to be at peace with aging. You need to be sure you’re not going to the fires (or, in the case of the religious person, you need to be sure that you are not going to sleep for good).
Think through what death means, research all of your questions until you arrive at answers in which you possess at least a good amount of confidence. That’s the only way in which you can hope to succeed at your effort of staying young at heart. Trying not to think about death as you get up in years is like trying not to think about the word “pistachio.” The harder you work to keep it out of your mind, the harder it is going to fight to get back in. And those struggling with thoughts of approaching death have a hard time staying young at heart.
It’s easy for young people not to think about death. For them, it’s something that happens to other people. It gets harder and harder to have confidence in that lie as the years tick off. When you get to the wrong side of 50, as I recently did, you need to stop putting off the job of coming to terms with the grim reaper. Tell him that you are not running anymore. Tell him that you’ll meet him underneath the highway at dusk and that you’re going to punch him in the nose so many times that he’s going to wish he had been born without a nose. Try to say it like you mean it. He doesn’t scare easy.
Staying young at heart requires a sense of humor.
Humor is not jokes. Humor is perspective.
Perspective is what makes it possible to be okay with the fact that you can’t run marathons anymore. When you were young, you were able to do more things each year. Now things are closing in on you. Marathons are out because of the knees. You wish that they printed books in a larger type. You can’t remember the last time you slept nine hours straight. First they stopped adding new things. Now they’re actually taking away things that you’ve enjoyed for a long time.
They do it that way so it won’t come as a shock when the whole thing gets taken away. Can you imagine what it would be like if you could run marathons right up into your 80s and then one day it would just be “poof!” and no more nothing. Things are strange enough as they are.
It hurts to have things taken away. The one thing you’ve got going for you is that you’ve been around long enough to have come to at least a dim recognition that it’s all a gift anyway, so the right attitude is to be happy for the things they haven’t yet taken away. That’s humor. That’s perspective.
The trick is to be not just saying it but believing it deep down. There’s a story about Edmund Campion that I find very funny. He was in prison and the time of his torture was approaching. The fellow who had turned him in came to visit and acknowledged that he had done wrong. Campion told the fellow that he was willing to hear his confession. The fellow said: “What, you could forgive even me?” “Oh, sure,” said Campion, “but the penance will be severe.
Getting old is going off to your torture. Not in as dramatic a way as Campion did, but the basic concept is pretty much the same. You’ll enjoy the feeling that goes with staying young at heart for more of the remaining days if you can make jokes about it than you will if you cannot. Jokes that truly express how you feel are funnier and have more magic power than those you put forward because you know that this is the sort of thing you are supposed to joke about.
Staying young at heart requires learning new things.
It’s pretty darn easy to learn when you are young. You don’t know anything. If you get the urge to walk somewhere, you need to learn to tie your shoes. If you want to get places faster, you need to learn how to drive a car. If you want to have money to finance your eating habit, you need to learn how to make a good impression in a job interview. It’s one natural learning experience after another.
My mother told me one of the saddest stories I have ever heard. I was reading a lot of Somerset Maugham for a time and she saw a copy of Of Human Bondage on the table. She said: “Oh, I read that!” I was amazed. I asked when she read it. She said that she read it before she got married. She used to work in a factory, then go to dances at night, and then go home and read in bed before getting a few hours sleep and heading back off to the factory. So how come I never saw her reading books like Of Human Bondage? “You stop doing all the things you really enjoy after you get married and have children.”
Oh.
My mother had a good life and a happy marriage. And wonderful kids! Her answer can be easily misunderstood. I tell you about it, however, because it gets at something important that happens to a lot of us as we age. Every now and again I’ll put on my Monkees CD collection (LIsten to the Band) to see if they really were as good as I once thought they were. The work product holds up. They really were good. So were the Hollies. So were the Turtles. So were the Lovin’ Spoonful. They were all just great. So why don’t I make time to listen to them much anymore?
Other things take up the time. I was learning about the big bad world by listening to those songs, and now, while the songs are still enjoyable, I already know a good bit about the big bad world, so the message being delivered is not so urgent. So I’ve let the other things go to the top of the list. In other words, I’ve stopped doing all the things I really enjoy now that I’m married and have children.
That makes sense. There’s a time for the Turtles and there’s a time for moving past the Turtles. The Bible says so! It says something like that anyhow. I’m sure of it.
You’ve got to be learning something new, though, to succeed at your effort at staying young at heart. Now I’m learning about the internet search engines. Now I’m learning about writing longer, books instead of articles or columns. Now I’m learning about raising children. I’m not learning the lessons contained in “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?” or “Happy Together.” But I’m still learning.
That stops and the entire machine shuts down.
I think that’s why Dylan warns us never to stop working. It doesn’t have to be for pay. But you better always be working at something. Otherwise the machine shuts down. Once it shuts down it’s real hard to get it moving forward again.
Staying young at heart requires accepting that you are old.
Speaking of Dylan, he’s always been a master at presenting an image. He doesn’t try to look young in his photos, at least not in an obvious way. If anything, he plays up his age. He puts on an act that argues that he is older than he is and that causes your mind to resist the act and to argue “oh, he’s not that old!” Which is of course just what he wants you to do.
There’s a way to be young when you are old. It is not to fake youth. There really is such a thing as an old person with a young spirit. One of the elements of a young spirit is confidence. By pretending to be something you are not, you blow that one right out of the gate. Those staying young at heart should have a greater confidence than the young. What appears to be confidence in the young is often just bravado. With those staying young at heart, there is the true confidence from actually having witnessed much of what life has to show.
Staying young at heart requires taking the focus off of yourself.
Back to that Bible passage. It’s natural for the young to be self-absorbed. Young people are preparing to take on the big bad world, and don’t want to make a mess of it. So they have a lot of self-oriented stuff to figure out.
That stuff is supposed to be behind you when you are old. The way to be young when you are old is to reach outside of yourself. That’s the edge you have over the young gunslingers. The young gunslingers can draw quicker. Try to outdraw them, and you’re going to end up face-down on the street. You can outfox them. You can win at a young person’s game by playing it by an old person’s rules.
I read in a book about how it is possible for an old person to develop a side of her personality that she was not able to develop when she was young. Say that you have always been great at fixing things around the house but not so hot at listening to people’s troubles and giving them advice. When you get old, you gain an ability to do that. People who could never cook learn how to cook. People who never had patience develop patience. People who were never deep think deep thoughts. People who were never silly think silly thoughts.
Why does this happen? You’re not fighting anymore to be “you” when you’re old. You’ve already fought that battle, and you experienced some wins and some losses and some rain-outs. You are able to accept the battle as over. You are able to ease up a bit and do some things that have nothing to do with the success of that idea that you used to carry around about what was “you” and why that was such an important thing to be.
This is why grandparents can do things for children that parents cannot. The parents are probably handling things in the way that the grandparents did back when they were parents. The grandparent stage is a chance to do it different. A grandparent who handles a child in a different manner than how he handled a child when he was a parent is starting the adventure over again. He is in an important sense staying young at heart.
I caught you! You’re thinking of the word “pistachio,” aren’t you?