Turning 67

What I read: On Aging by Maya Angelou. Published in the collection And Still I Rise in 1978.

In a few days I will officially be 67 years old. Truth is when I reach the halfway mark of the year after my birthday, I start using the larger age number since it feels more honest. 66 and 10 months seems more like 67 than 66 to me. I know not everyone feels that way. Defying age to the last moment appears baked into our culture.

I'm not sure why I returned to Maya Angelou's poem after at least a decade since I last read it. Perhaps I'm reaching the point in later life where each year feels like a more significant milestone. Maybe as I ponder things like my future retirement from corporate life, collecting Social Security, and signing up for Medicare, mulling over aging itself just happens.

When And Still I Rise was first published I was only 24. I recall that I read the collection a few years later in a library in Los Angeles. Not having a lot of disposable income at the time, I read countless books from the library and often read entire books while at the library. Libraries have always been a happy place for me, a place of quietude and intellectual refuge. I really hope libraries survive. But I digress.

Birthdays have never been big events for me, as a child or adult. Parties to celebrate another run past my birthdate never held a lot of importance. They still don't. Yet, 67 seems personally relevant, demarcating a next phase of life for me.

67 is a year past my Social Security Full Retirement Age (how odd that is for me to type). Peers increasingly ask when I'm going to retire from my job (the answer is I don't know - it's still a good gig). Conversations at social events seem to be teetering toward more talk of health and pensions (for those lucky enough to have them) and less about corporate ladder climbing and who's hot on the Top 40 charts. Age has an impact, an impact I at times accept and at other times staunchly deny.

For some reason, this snippet from William Shakespeare's “As You Like It” (Act 2, Scene 3) pops into my head when I think about my age.

The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly.

Sometimes my own age indeed feels like a lusty winter, healthy and strong despite the advancing years. I don't feel old at all. Sure, my body aches a bit from the years’ wear and tear, but my mind still feels like I could be 30 or 40. I hang out with many younger people in my social circles and generally feel at home with them. Sometimes when I'm with people my own age their despair due to their nonconsensual tussle with the clock yanks me down to wallow with them in their elderly malaise. I don't like feeling that way. It doesn't feel genuine to me.

When my bones are stiff and aching,
And my feet won’t climb the stair,
I will only ask one favor:
Don’t bring me no rocking chair.
When you see me walking, stumbling,
Don’t study and get it wrong.
‘Cause tired don’t mean lazy
And every goodbye ain’t gone.

Anyway, I'm blathering. The real reason I started to pen this post is to offer a few things I believe people my age have a right to offer as some semblance of wisdom. One can read wisdom in books. One can have bestowed upon them wisdom from gurus and spiritual leaders. But nothing replaces the wisdom garnered from walking upon the planet for a while and dealing with its ups and downs. If you feel it's arrogant for me to assume you want to read such advice, I accept that assessment.

So, here goes. Take what you want from this, or not. If any of this helps, great. If not, thank you in advance for reading it anyway.

My first bit of advice comes from real world experience. Wear sunscreen. This advice kicks off the iconic piece by Baz Luhrmann, Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen, and much great advice therein originally offered by Mary Schmich in her 1997 essay. (If you've never heard it, take a moment to do so - it's awesome.) But trust me as someone who has dealt with a few significant skin cancer surgeries and now quarterly visits to a dermatologist, it's good advice. Accordingly, don't bake yourself in the sun. I know tans are sexy to some, but tanning has never been a good idea, for anyone, especially for the paler among us, a physical trait for which I do not thank my Irish ancestors.

Stop chasing goals so much. That sounds like horrible advice to some, but as someone who has for decades created countless goals and plans, only to rightfully abandon them when life took me in another fruitful direction, goals are at best something to be placed on the far horizon as an approximate target to which you can aim. Know that along the way you're going to encounter forks in the road you're better off taking than the original path on which you embarked. For articulate thoughts on the topic, let me point you to two of my favorite articles on the subject, Stop Setting Goals by John Gorman, and This New Year, Dare to Be Unfaithful to Your Goals by Tama Kieves.

Eschew as many social constructs and constraints as you can if they hinder your happiness. Don't feel you have to get married, stay single, or have only one partner or romantic interest. Don't play the keeping up with the Joneses game because it's a game with no winner, no matter what the motivational speakers tell you. Don't pattern yourself after the most popular or richest among us because most of them are no happier than you are right now. Don't feel compelled to adhere to a faith, or any faith at all, because true happiness comes from simply being a good person and living a good life and you don't need a deity or religion to do that. But feel free to abide by something spiritual if you so desire. In short, realize that most of the boxes into which people, family, and society want to put you are there just to make other people's lives easier because each box is clearly labeled.

Read books. Lots of books. All types of books. In fact, the post I was planning to write today was about reading books, but for some reason this post felt more urgent. As I wrote in my Getting More From Nonfiction Books post,

People have asked me if there is any one thing that has served me best throughout my life above all else and I always say my love of reading books. Books have transformed me as a person. Books are responsible for my successful career paths. Books are my companions late at night when the world goes away except for the wise words or enthralling story on the page.

Learn to self-educate. Don’t rely entirely on classroom-based or other traditional methods of learning. Too much changes for the bulk of useful knowledge and skill sets to remain relevant for long. Figure out how to learn from books, casual discussions, mentorships, videos, and articles. This will serve you well both in your personal life to become a more well-rounded person and in your professional life to increase your likelihood of being hired and subsequent professional advancement. 

Learn to touch type. This might seem like an odd one, and perhaps it will be outdated soon by voice recognition so ubiquitous and seamless typing becomes unnecessary. Apart from the aforementioned ability to self-educate, no skill has advanced my professional life more than the fact that I can type 100 words per minute on my laptop on a good day. I attribute much of my corporate office and writing career success to my typing speed, as trite as that might at first appear.

Save 10% of your income, preferably in some manner that makes such setting aside of money invisible to you day-to-day. Keep some readily available in cash, enough to keep all your bills paid for a year or two. I know this is tougher to do today than in my youth, but I think the advice still stands up well. Invest the rest in low-fee, index funds that cover a broad spectrum of the entire stock market. You will be tempted to spend that 10%. Don't, not unless it's truly a dire emergency. You might also expect me to suggest you invest in real estate and while I understand the data behind investing in real estate, I've always found the idea owning property a pain in the ass. I owned a house once and didn’t enjoy it. But I can't discount that over time real estate almost always goes up. If you can deal with the hassles, buy a home, or otherwise invest in property. Just remember that the current climate change dynamics at play are likely to dramatically affect the attractiveness of certain areas in the future, perhaps sooner than later. Buyer beware, or at least be cautious.

When you have a chance to have sex, do it. I've never understood how prudish some people are regarding sex. It feels good. It connects human beings in powerful ways. It's a natural destresser. It's just plain fun. Whether you decide to do it with only one life partner or date around frequently, do it only in ways that elevate you and that conform to your own needs for consent and safety. As Gore Vidal said, "Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television." You can pass on feeling the need to be on television unless that’s your thing, but he's right about the sex.

Exercise. Forever. Don't fall prey to exercise device or system sales pitches or the barrage of trainer advice and fitness articles. You don't need to be buffed and ripped. Your muscles don't need to be huge. You don't need to be able to scale the sheer side of a mountain. If you want to be a bodybuilder or runway model thin and it makes you happy, rock it. But an abundance of brisk walking together with something like yoga or calisthenics will generally suffice for most people's fitness needs. Also, remember physical exercise has positive effects on brain function too. Eat well.

Travel. If there's one regret I have in life, it's that I didn't travel more. I plan to remedy that somewhat during the coming decade or two, but I do wish I had traveled the world more in my younger years. If more of us traveled, perhaps we'd encounter more varied cultures and be kinder to each other.

Buy less stuff. Study after study concludes that money and the possessions it affords us to buy only provide a modicum of improved happiness and only to a certain point. I watched as my parents aged and continued to downsize their lives to smaller homes and fewer belongings as the years progressed. There was never a correlation between how big their house was or how much they owned and their level of happiness. Buy experiences, not stuff. Go to museums, theater, dinners with friends, and as just mentioned, travel. Experiences stay with us, enliven us. The fancy new sports car or designer dress will provide but a fleeting jolt of greater happiness. If you have never seen “The Story of Stuff,” check it out for yet another perspective on why less stuff can be a good thing.

When it comes to politics, try to stick to facts, policies, and things that benefit everyone. I'm not going to pummel you with my political views in this post, but anyone who knows me is aware I fall on the left side of the spectrum. I make no apologies for that. But I’m also fully aware I've changed my political tune multiple times over my lifetime on certain topics and keeping an open mind is a good thing. That said, remain politically engaged. Always vote! Stay informed on political topics and your local and national governance. Do not sit back and let others decide on issues that will affect your daily life in substantive ways. Complacency and inaction are folly.

I have more advice, but I've already doled out far more than I had intended. I hope some of it was useful. I'm sure you have lots of great advice to give too.

Oh, that reminds me. Realize you're unique. There is no one on Earth like you. You have unique gifts, perspectives, skills, education, and experiences, all of which combine to create an entirely special person unlike anyone else. Revel in that and realize you have a lot to offer the world if you but share it.

Peace. (Working for world peace is another good thing to do. OK, I'll shut up now.)