It was only a matter of time before I scribbled down a few thoughts on ageing. I didn’t get old on purpose. It just sort of happened to me. In fact I had never really had to consider whether I was old or not until on September 13th 2020 when, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, I quietly became, according to the state, a pensioner. Now I took this quite literally. I had retired from the world of work when I was sixty four and now two years later was entitled to receive a pension; a sort of token thank you for all the Social Insurance contributions I had paid during all those years at work.
What I didn’t realise was that by the mere act of surviving for sixty six years I would suddenly be regarded by society as old. It wasn’t enough for me being a pensioner I was now an old age pensioner. In case I forgot they had a handy abbreviation ready for my use, the dreaded and in my case, hated OAP. It was like somebody had flicked a switch. I had moved from citizen to senior citizen. I never remembered signing up for this. I had never completed the consent form consigning me to a group that it seemed had no longer much to offer, that needed to be looked after by the State and that was on a slippery slope to an inevitable conclusion. Suddenly articles on the future burden caused by an ageing population became relevant.
This overnight transition was summarised nicely by Leon Trotsky when he stated that;
“Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.”
This was certainly true in my case. Everyone else seemed to know it before me. I was now the recipient of reduced fees in cinemas, theatres and buses and trains were free. Was this the state acknowledging that despite a lifetime of effort they expected old age to be accompanied by a cash flow crisis. Even the girl at the checkout at B&Q seemed to understand. One day I approached the till with a trolley. On it were four sacks of potting compost. All went well until I produced the card they had given me that would get me 10% off because I was over 60. On seeing this she looked at me with a sympathetic smile, put her hand gently on my wrist and in a voice people usually reserved for wheelchair users or children asked if I needed help in loading my car. I was about to reject this presumption of my diminishing faculties by asking her how she thought I had loaded the bloody trolley in the first place when I noticed it was raining. I swallowed hard and smiled, pocketed my indignation for another time, thanked her for the offer and while I sat in the car flicking over the first clues in the Irish Times crossword a young man named Rory loaded the boot in the pouring rain. I learned a salutary lesson that day about opportunity and am now a regular beneficiary of help triggered by other people’s generalisations. Why should I waste my precious third age trying to change their minds.
This society engineered transition reminded me of the paradox that while the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone. Here I need to make the distinction between age and getting older. Steve Maraboli the American writer contends that;
“Some people age, some people get older. The wise know the difference.”
What he is suggesting is that ageing is inevitable but getting old is more of a choice, the former to do with the body, the latter with the mind. I have no problem with ageing because if you think about it age means nothing. There are people who are alive and people who are dead. That’s all there is to it. Teenage, middle age and old age are just whistle stops on life’s journey, all with their own opportunities.
There are, of course, some undeniable signs that I am getting older. Why do authority figures like police, nurses, junior doctors etc. look as if they have just left school? People I grew up with have started to die off so I sadly realise that not everyone is going to grow old with me. Kneeling down to weed the flowerbeds is okay; it’s the getting up that reminds me that time is passing. I look with pride at the immaculate beds while rubbing wintergreen cream into my lower back. I find myself increasingly reflecting on and talking about the past. Boyd Packer, the American Religious Leader, suggested rather unkindly that young people talk about the future because they have no past and older people talk about the past because they have no future. I disagree. The demands of youth and working age corral most people to deal with issues that sit in the present. Retirement offers the time to reflect and remember; to clarify the link to history that comes with age. Despite a multitude of reminders of the physical realities of old age one can take some comfort from the words of Maurice Chevalier who concluded that;
“Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.”
George Bernard Shaw advised that
“There is no point in trying to live forever as you will not succeed.”
My attitude to ageing is that I will live in the mind while accepting the limitations of the body. Some people in retirement continue to live by the clock and calendar as they did through their working lives. They worry because morning seems to come earlier as they grow older. They waste some of the time they have left by worrying about how much time they have left. They would do well to remember that worrying is a bit like sitting in a rocking chair; it gives you something to do but doesn’t get you very far. They hope they will live until they are 80, 90, even 100. But they can’t answer the question to do what. They don’t want to grow old, I think they are just afraid of dying. The best they can hope for is a postponement. I sometimes wonder how old they would be if they didn’t know their exact age.
When I was considering retiring a year early my thoughts centred on one question “Who am I?” Most of my work life had floated round the question “What do I do?” Once I started to answer the new question the shackles of working life fell away and the possibilities for using my remaining time started to rack up. The overarching freedom was the right to use my time as I pleased, to try new things and if I didn’t enjoy them to ditch them. I didn’t need a bucket list. All that was required was to keep my mind active, to keep it open to learning and expanding. Now three years on I find this type of mental hedonism suits me well. Being good at something is not a good enough reason to continue it. I have to enjoy it as well if I am to make best use of the time left.
So aging for me is a question of mind over matter. In your dreams you have no age. They are not constrained by temporal measures. There are no middays or midnights. Weekends don’t exist because weekdays don’t exist. If we think of our life stages as a day then older people can see the possibilities in the words of writer Elizabeth Goudge.
“The very old and the very young have something in common that makes it right that they should be left alone together. Dawn and sunset see stars shining in a blue sky; but morning and midday and afternoon do not, poor things.”
The signs of aging are legion and have filled many medical tomes. Pharmacy shelves bend with concoctions for the older person, offering no cure for a myriad of ailments, just making them a little more tolerable. I think I will leave the monitoring of them to my once a year NCT test with my GP and the good advice of my wife. The signs and symptoms I need to monitor are to do with the other life. I will know I’m in trouble when I begin to outlive enthusiasm, when I stop trying new things, when I stop finding joy in everyday things.
If it helps the state to think of me as old I won’t waste my time trying to dissuade it. My time is for me to fill not for others to take. As long as my mind allows I will continue to seek answers to that who am I question? It’s never too late to be oneself. As far as the time I have left my only hope is put beautifully in Selma Lagerlof’s Gosta Berling’s Saga;
“Old butterflies should have the sense to die while the summer sun is shining,”
The Scribbler Griffin 