NOTES FROM THE 8TH DECADE #5

THE TIMER IS RUNNING

December 2009

As one would imagine, I have been pondering the significance of being seventy years old since my 69th birthday last year.  Turning seventy has some emotional significance that was not there during the decade of the sixties.  Seventy sounds so much older than sixty-nine and conjures images in my mind of men with white hair and thick white mustaches, walking slightly bent forward, wearing a button down sweater and lace-less shoes. Shamelessly I have found comfort in hearing from friends and family that I do not look seventy, or in their surprise when I tell them my age...”I never would have guessed”, or “are you kidding me?”

I imagine that all who have had the good fortune to reach this milestone shares these thoughts.  Observations on turning seventy are as varied as the folks who offer them, from embracing their age and rejoicing in its advantages, to rebelling against it and bemoaning lost youth. I see and understand both points of view. There is indeed a sense of freedom that accompanies age, as well as a feeling of relief from having navigated all the years with reasonable success. For me, that offsets the loss of physical capacity as well as the enthusiasm and nativity of youth. 

But more than anything else, positive or negative, what resonates the most is the threat to the “some days” that have been so much a part of my life. Those some days were my fall back, my promises to myself; they were there to keep my dreams alive. They are not completely gone, but their expanse, their range, has been severely narrowed by knowing that most of my years are now behind me and that the once unlimited future has become both limited and vulnerable. Mentally I have been processing all of this for several years, but that magical number, seventy, seems to have crystallized these notions into a simple, concrete concept, the timer has been set. It is on and running, and I don’t know where it has been set to turn off, 6 months, 6 years, or 20 plus years. Of course the same can be said for all of us, regardless of age, but few of us pay any attention to it until we reach a certain age, which for me appears to be seventy.