At 71, I think about the age thing a fair bit, but not obsessively. For the last ten years, each time I hit a birthday I said to myself, Well, you have two decades left. I'll be 72 in October. Will I say that to myself again? ~ Meanwhile, 40 is absolutely middle-aged. You're right.
You easily have two decades left. My maternal grandmother lived until 97. A lot of this is genetics, of course, but now with modern medicine… the point really is that my grandmother was very happy with her life until 92. We just need reasons to keep going, right?
I want so little at this point. It’s the way to be. I'm not quite at Epictetus’ level but that’s a blend of aspirational and a bit of a trap in the vein of moral saints (like Simone Weil). It’s hard in our culture where everything conspires to want us to want things to fuel the consumer capitalist machine.
Wonderful reflections, Mark, on this irritating obsession with youth. You consider aspects I have not. I have generally approached it only through the facts of life expectancy and math. It’s something that continues to irritate me, i.e., how irrationally people reckon age in this country. I’m 57 and have people constantly tell me I’m “young” and seriously mean it rather than making a play on my last name. But that is, in fact, not true. The CDC puts the average lifespan of a man in the US at 76.5. That means I’m exactly three-fourths to the end. In fact, I was lying in bed the other night and it occurred to me, if I live only an average lifespan, I have less than 2 decades to go while nearly 6 decades are behind me. It was a jarring thought. Although, longevity is on both sides of my family with grandparents and great grandparents who all lived well into their 80s and some into their 90s. So, that’s in my favor.
It also reminds me of the old issue of people saying how the Romantic poets all died young when this is not in fact true. Years ago I sat down and looked at the numbers. And it’s noteworthy that in England at the time the average life expectancy was around 39 or 40 years old. So, looking at that, yes, Keats (25), Shelley (29), and Byron (36), all died young. But the other major English Romantic poets did not, nor did some of the minor ones. Coleridge died at 61, Blake at 69, and Wordworth at 80. Additionally, Robert Southey died at 68, John Clare at 70, and Leigh Hunt at 74. Given the life expectancy, they lived rather long lives. Not always happy ones, but not short. Even on the shortest end, Coleridge, he still lived 52.5% longer than the average life expectancy of the time.
Of course, as George Bradley explores in his beautiful poem “Keats’s Handkerchief,” no matter when we die, it’s always too soon, and we should always have died hereafter.
At 71, I think about the age thing a fair bit, but not obsessively. For the last ten years, each time I hit a birthday I said to myself, Well, you have two decades left. I'll be 72 in October. Will I say that to myself again? ~ Meanwhile, 40 is absolutely middle-aged. You're right.
You easily have two decades left. My maternal grandmother lived until 97. A lot of this is genetics, of course, but now with modern medicine… the point really is that my grandmother was very happy with her life until 92. We just need reasons to keep going, right?
My 20-year-old self to my 60-year-old-self, when the latter told the former what she would want: "No WAY! That's ALL???"
I want so little at this point. It’s the way to be. I'm not quite at Epictetus’ level but that’s a blend of aspirational and a bit of a trap in the vein of moral saints (like Simone Weil). It’s hard in our culture where everything conspires to want us to want things to fuel the consumer capitalist machine.
Indeed. The way to resist is to...resist it.
Well writ!
Wonderful reflections, Mark, on this irritating obsession with youth. You consider aspects I have not. I have generally approached it only through the facts of life expectancy and math. It’s something that continues to irritate me, i.e., how irrationally people reckon age in this country. I’m 57 and have people constantly tell me I’m “young” and seriously mean it rather than making a play on my last name. But that is, in fact, not true. The CDC puts the average lifespan of a man in the US at 76.5. That means I’m exactly three-fourths to the end. In fact, I was lying in bed the other night and it occurred to me, if I live only an average lifespan, I have less than 2 decades to go while nearly 6 decades are behind me. It was a jarring thought. Although, longevity is on both sides of my family with grandparents and great grandparents who all lived well into their 80s and some into their 90s. So, that’s in my favor.
It also reminds me of the old issue of people saying how the Romantic poets all died young when this is not in fact true. Years ago I sat down and looked at the numbers. And it’s noteworthy that in England at the time the average life expectancy was around 39 or 40 years old. So, looking at that, yes, Keats (25), Shelley (29), and Byron (36), all died young. But the other major English Romantic poets did not, nor did some of the minor ones. Coleridge died at 61, Blake at 69, and Wordworth at 80. Additionally, Robert Southey died at 68, John Clare at 70, and Leigh Hunt at 74. Given the life expectancy, they lived rather long lives. Not always happy ones, but not short. Even on the shortest end, Coleridge, he still lived 52.5% longer than the average life expectancy of the time.
Of course, as George Bradley explores in his beautiful poem “Keats’s Handkerchief,” no matter when we die, it’s always too soon, and we should always have died hereafter.