Is This What Getting Old Feels Like?

Reflections at the End of a Week

It’s the end of a week. Last year, we moved to a little cul-de-sac on the edge of where the suburbs meet the country, and I had no idea what heaven looked like until now. Since moving here, I’ve been to almost every major city in America, and every time I leave, all I want is to come back. I suppose that means I’m getting old. There are kids playing outside, their voices laughing. Not my kids, but kids, nonetheless. When I look at them, I see myself. When they look back at me, I wonder what they recognize, if anything.

Is this what getting old feels like? I never thought of myself as old, but now I understand this is something all old people think. These days, my attention is drawn to certain things I never noticed before, like the slowness of thoughts coming into form. A word or phrase, even a memory, feels like a fish swimming to the surface. There is something calling to the senses, pulling it into awareness; and if I am patient enough, I just might catch it. But who has time for that? Certainly not young people.

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As I wait for my thoughts to take shape, I can sometimes see the impatience on a listener’s face. I, too, feel impatient with myself. I am more than one person, it seems, one that contains multitudes. Once, I asked a friend which part of himself was speaking when he heard his own thoughts, and which was listening. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I’m just me.” I nodded quietly, wondering if I was just weird.

I am starting to recognize the many people contained in a single entity called my “self.” This cornucopia of identities is often compartmentalized into one person, but anyone who’s ever gone spelunking in the caves of their own mind knows it’s never quite that simple. This is a place of mystery and darkness, this place called you, one where you never know what you might find, depending on how long you can hold your breath.

Anyway, forty isn’t old. All my fifty-something friends tell me so.

There is so much to do now and so little that matters. I spent yesterday working on one project at the neglect of several others and still wonder if that was the right choice. I’ve lived and worked long enough, though, to know that whatever doesn’t get done today will, indeed, be waiting tomorrow. Most deadlines, I’ve learned, are really just suggestions. Nonetheless, I try to stick to commitments without pulling too many unnecessary all-nighters that invariably lead to the receiving party getting to it whenever they get to it. There is more time than we realize, and we don’t actually have to rush anywhere.

My body aches in places that never used to hurt before. These discomforts are now part of daily life, a reality I’ve grown accustomed to. I should go for a walk, I think, maybe work out this afternoon before supper, do something to make me feel better. Maybe another juice fast would help or this pickleball craze everyone is raving about. I could take a break from work and swing a kettlebell for a few minutes or do some push-ups. That would be something. But something isn’t everything, and these days nothing sounds so much better.

There is also the email inbox to contend with, along with a never-ending to-do list. Not to mention unfinished yard work and the garage that still needs cleaning. There are papers on the desk, receipts and unopened letters, along with a handful of business-related items. I am waiting on the insurance adjuster to send me a report for the water damage so that I can collect our reimbursement money for the demo work done a few months ago. Then, there’s this strange notice from the IRS, which I immediately forward to my tax accountant. Who chose this life, and is it even living? I am now in the middle of my life, and I wonder if the boy who began this journey would even recognize what he signed up for. I am the recipient of someone else’s choices, someone much younger and less mature than me. I am the inheritor of a previous generation’s foolishness—and, also, the fool. This is forty.

I am the same age my father was when I first got my driver’s license and was so eager to venture out into the world, which is ironic since all I want now is to retreat from it. These days, my greatest ambition is to get lost in early morning birdsong as I sit on the porch, sipping tea. A good day is one where there is nothing to do and all that is required is to thumb through an old novel I never had time to read before. Now, all there is is time, even as it contracts before me. I see the value of each moment and attempt to seize it before it fades away forever, replaced by another. More is no longer interesting. I don’t need to get lost in any new points of interest or be introduced to another technological breakthrough. Here is just fine. Now is all I need. I’ve missed so much already; please don’t send me any more novelty. I only want to stretch this second into eternity and get out of bed slowly, feeling the smooth skin of my wife’s back, forgetting her tattoo until I see it rising from the sheets like dawn.

Is this old? I didn’t even see it coming.

When I was a teenager, forty was old. Now that I’m here, I wonder if sixty is the real old. They say age is a number, but it seems to be more a state of mind, a feeling that you’ve been here a long time—and soon, you will not be. I wonder why everyone is rushing out of their homes every day to get somewhere else, then scrambling to get back, not even noticing the robins perched atop their houses, crying out to be noticed. I wonder why so many of us keep straining for the next level when the one we’re at doesn’t seem to be very enjoyable. What is all this for? And what, honestly, could be better than dipping your toes into a stream and smiling as you start tapping into today?

The kids think I’m weird, and they’re not wrong, especially when I lie outside in the grass of our front yard and close my eyes, feeling the hard sun warm my soft body and the minutes become hours. I feel young but no longer understand youth. I am more a part of this world than ever but barely recognize what I see. A little slower in movement, a little more careful with my speech, I am more forgiving of myself than ever but surprisingly impatient with others. Why did they have to go and change everything? It’s them who are doing all the changing, I am certain of it.

One does not know one is getting irrelevant—it just happens. The outside gradually turns gray while everything inside you comes alive, like the color part in The Wizard of Oz movie. The world is now brimming with possibility. You notice chirping in the background of everyday life, the leaves dancing in the wind. You finally understand so many things, but no one wants to listen. All the music you love and books you admire are relics of the past, bygone ephemera that will soon disappear. The teenagers roll their eyes, but you cannot help telling them, anyway. None of this seems that far away.

Part of getting older is allowing youth to do what it does. They’ll understand some day, maybe. Then again, your parents really went off the deep end, didn’t they? There is a funny sort of amusement in looking both forwards and backwards and not being able to recognize the book-ending generations. You are stuck in the middle of it all, and the most you can do is pretend to be more clueless than you are. Even that is more interesting than trying to keep up with a world that is clearly losing its damn mind. So you feign ignorance and watch the kids get frustrated as you ramble away. But we have to take our diversions where we can get them.

It may be that no person ever feels their age, that we all struggle to recognize the wilting face in the mirror, gasping and chuckling at the same time and remembering we are the ones the kids make fun of now. I don’t know how old I am, anymore. I am both alive and dying at the same time, keenly aware of the end and lucid about what has been. Anne Lamott once wrote, “I am all the ages I’ve ever been.” And that seems true to me. To this day, I can still feel every moment of a surprise party my mother threw for me on my thirteenth birthday when she took Ben Hudson and me out to dinner and had to stop by her workplace to “pick something up.”

When we entered the bowling alley where she worked, one kid from school—Joel—poked his head around the corner, grinning. Then every classmate of mine came out from hiding, smiling and shouting, ready for pizza. When it was time for cake, I received a special bowling pin that said “Happy Birthday, Jeff” in permanent marker that had left the slightest of streaks on the second “F” before drying. I kept that pin until after college, losing it somewhere in one of the many moves of young adulthood. Even now, whenever there is a potential surprise looming, part of me waits for all my friends to emerge from some hidden corner, welcoming me to a party I didn’t know was coming but always anticipated.

Anyway, I’m not sure if it’s possible to ever feel the age you are, when in fact, you are all of them.

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© 2023 Jeff Goins
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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