Finding oneself old continues, day by day, to rank among life’s most astounding events. For me, it came as an unprecedented surprise to discover myself an eighty-year-old. Up until now, this has been something that happens to other people.
Now that it has happened to me, I feel genuinely happy to have reached a kind of eminence. Like many before me, I have been inducted into the army of elders, those who have joined the ranks of the new aged.
That we are so numerous is a modern phenomenon ─ had we been born in the 19th century it probably would not have happened. But the following century produced an unprecedented burst of longevity from which we have benefited, a gain of some thirty years of life expectancy in the United States and other wealthy countries
My feelings about others reaching longevity, however, have not entirely prepared me for reaching it myself. I cannot quite get my arms around the reality of my own new age status. Nor, I suspect, can those others.
“Of all the things that can happen to a man, growing old is the most surprising.” This quotation, attributed to Tolstoy, strikes me as right on the mark. Surprise indeed, how can so much time have passed and brought so much change? The mystery goes on.
How can I be the same person who felt vigorous virtually all of the time, the person who could run fast around the bases and across city blocks when occasion required?
Like not a few others, I was once tenacious in memory, fast in recall, witty in observation, and often seething with emotion. I could speak to large crowds confidently and effectively, and I could sum up and state my political positions with some impact.
Before adulthood, I knew the unique thrill of taking a fetching girl to a concert or a football game and I experienced the fantasies of the event leading to something incomparably more in a different mode.
It’s not that brain and body work badly, at least not yet. But much has changed, in ways difficult to chart and even more difficult to interpret. In both sectors I have become aware of an incipient frailty that is new.
It takes me longer to complete crossword puzzles than it used to. And often I cannot remember answers that would formerly have swum into my memory lightening fast.
Physically, my walk has become much slower and my run has almost disappeared. With regret, I now require pinch runners even before I reach base, and that happy arrival happens less often.
People now look at me differently from the way they used to. Quite commonly, they show me an expression that combines respect with concern. I am seen as both venerable and frail, regarded at one and the same time as deserving of a kind of reverence and some solicitude. Probably, this is the way I have regarded my elders before I joined their number.
Only a few people call me “sir,” a title not held in favor among those circles in which I move. In my neighborhood and in the environs of academia where I often travel, the custom is to use first names even for people decades older than oneself. Young children are taught to follow this practice, one that I welcome.
My approach to others has always favored democracy: we all belong to the human family and at that level are one. The Catholic Christianity I profess, at its best, also supports this approach, following the instruction of St. Paul who sees all members of the church, prelates and people of all social ranks, as sharing basic equality.
Sometimes, however, my first name, though welcome, stirs in me a vague sense of condescension. It smacks of a talking down as if the other were saying something to a child. In this instance my observed frailty has produced a response that suggests the need for a certain delicacy.
But it makes me feel almost resentful even though I am prepared to accept help in some circumstances. This perceived mixture of approaches, on the part of others younger than I, sets up social situations that call for careful reading of where I stand with them.
Riding in buses and subway cars provides obvious occasions for my age juniors to offer me seats. Only a few years ago, I would customarily turn down the offer on the grounds that I was just as capable as they of standing on a moving vehicle so long as there were straps or bars within reach. Now, my balance has become less reliable, making it unwise to refuse the offer
Besides which, I consider it a good thing for these juniors to look out for the well-being of their elders. When the fellow rider is an adolescent I regard it as especially desirable for them to be taken up on their offer and not refused.
Richard Griffin