I will turn 80 years old on February 27, 2025. So, I thought I would tell you what I’ve figured out about life so far.
* 80 is a number. A BIG number. And to me any number (but especially 80 these days) that ends with a zero seems formidable. I am not exactly sure why I feel this. Perhaps it’s a number indicating gravitas, import, seriousness. A number that means I know something. That I’m a mensch. The fact that I know what gravitas and mensch (wise guy/gal/self-identifying person) mean indicates that I’m old.
* A person’s chronological age does not exactly correlate with the age they look or feel. Then again, some mornings when I wake up, I feel as old as Walt Whitman looks in the photo of him I’ve included with this article. But on some nights when I am out on the town, I feel as young as Grandma Moses who started painting later in life but always looked … as old as Moses!
* Not everybody likes me, including myself. Nor do I like everybody. In fact, I like very few people. They just seem to be in the way too much of the time. And they talk too much. About nothing, really. Especially when it comes to how they think the world has done them one disservice after another, e.g., the fact they are getting old and are feeling the heavy weight of gravitas and the responsibility of a mensch.
* There is not enough time left for me on the planet to do the many things I still want to do, e.g., to see all those places around the world that I have only dreamed about, especially that Welsh town with the longest name of any place in the world: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Nor is there time left for me to learn to say it or spell it without looking it up.
* More things I still want to do: to bring home a neighborhood of Golden Retrievers who know how to cook and clean and listen to my problems without judgment, to eat an unlimited amount of Hershey Chocolate Bars with Almonds and feel spiritually good about it, to sing a “high G” without sounding like an 80-year-old man who is trying really hard not to sound like an 80-year-old man.
* I have outlived dear friends and not-so-dear individuals. Many of them taught me something about myself. A repeated lesson for me is that a person I don’t like at first, sometimes becomes a close friend. A possible explanation for this is that I identify something about the individual that I see in myself, something I do not like. Discussing this with the person usually brings us closer.
* It’s damn hard to admit that I’m wrong. It’s even harder for me to stay silent when I feel somebody has done me wrong or done others wrong. I realize, however, that the world does not revolve around me, but then I also know that it does not revolve around anyone else. I realize this, but wish it were not so – that the world revolved around me, and that I could choose who to keep on such a world or who to push off.
* I am less anxious about getting things right or being or doing my best at many things, like running a marathon race. Many of my long-lived expectations about myself have lessened along with my hormonal urges, road rage, and height. Consequently, other expectations about myself have increased, including jet-lag recovery time, hours awake during the night, and number of trips to the bathroom.
* I am far slower doing things now. But then maybe that is because I am 80 and a mensch! I am not as stupid as I used to be when I rushed through life, causing physical and emotional injuries to myself and others. So, these days, I do not assume that the door is open, and I can rush through it, like I did once at a fancy hotel, causing me to shatter the door along with my various body parts and ego.
* I view the world and my place in it as “curiouser and curiouser” (to quote from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll). That is to say, my perspective on life gets stranger and stranger, if not weirder and weirder with each passing day. Realizing that I am but an infinitesimal speck in a Super-Sized Grand Unknown makes me question having learned anything at all, 80 years old or not!
* Still, I feel that with each moment, I am being lifted farther off the ground of my known existence, that I am treading the earth more lightly, that I am “Defying Gravity” (as that song from the play/movie Wicked exclaims), that those loved ones who are no longer on the planet (including dear animals who were among my menschen) are waiting for me to join them. And that I will do so with joy in time.
Note: Don Beaudreau is the author of 10 published books, and is completing his 12th one, to be published in early summer. It is a novel set on Cape Cod, MA. He is a member of the Ajijic Writers Group.
- Image Versus Substance - February 28, 2025
- I’M 80! - January 29, 2025
- A Myth For Our Time - December 26, 2024
