February had an extra day this year because of Leap Year. I always envy people whose birthday falls on February 29. With a birthday only every four years they must age far more slowly. For the rest of us it’s one birthday every single year, always on the same date, with no sign of slowing down.
It may be possible to grow old gracefully, but it is all-but impossible to grow old secretly. The hidden computers that count the days of our lives know exactly when a big birthday has passed, and when we enter the great senior marketplace. Ten thousand baby boomers turn 65 every day, so this is a huge market, and the older you get the more the sales pitches pour in. This year I found myself a prime target for people selling retirement communities, every imaginable type of medical product, and even a place in a mausoleum at 10% off – how could I resist? The local hospital, which usually leaves me alone, now urges me to join its seminars on “How to Get Old.” But I’ve been there, and done that. In fact I have managed to get old without taking any seminars at all, and obviously I have not done it right. It was interesting to see what I should have been doing: watching my diet, exercising my body and my brain, abstaining from alcohol, fighting osteoporosis, and investing wisely. It’s too late for any of that now, they should have told me decades ago.
I don’t approve of time, and its relentless habit of moving on, one second after another, until the next birthday arrives. Einstein believed that time was an illusion, but I have no faith in relativity. Time seems all too absolute to me.
I have been told, by some very senior seniors, that age used to command respect, although their memories may be playing tricks. Old people get less respect nowadays than old cars or old furniture, which at least may have monetary value. I saw a bumper sticker the other day: “Respect your Elders.” This falls into the same category of empty optimism as “World Peace Now.” It’s not going to happen.
There are some compensations in these golden years. We can complain about everything. We can make a list of all the awful things that we will never have to do again, like working for example. There’s no need to feel guilty about idleness because we are constantly told that all forms of human employment will be wiped out of existence by technology very soon, so we will all be retired, young and old together.
There’s more, or rather less. Never again will we have to go on ski holidays that are more like suicide missions, or stay up late. Never again will we have to drive on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, or visit all the churches in Florence, or sit on a freezing English beach, or even think about running for president in our old age. We can slow down. The Chinese sage Confucius, who said many wise and obvious things about everything, said this about age: It is perfectly fine to slow down, as long as you don’t stop.
Copyright: David Bouchier