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| ---Mark Twain |
---Mark Twain
There is no sadder sight than a young
pessimist except an old optimist
---Mark
Twain
So, which is
it?
---Susan
Bonifant
Nobody likes
a Pollyanna. But that "optimism" adage is a little too much like
saying if you're happy you must be kind of dumb. Plenty of young people use their cynicism to
avoid disappointment. Plenty of older
people expand themselves because they're optimistic.
I am
thinking about age because next month, like last May, I will again, turn older
than 50. I'm neutral on this, I was more upset at 49 about being almost 50. I
know now how stupid that was, but I know now how stupid it is to dread any age.
It insults all those other years that served you well, whether you looked forward to them or not.
Still, you
can't help but take stock, consider your opportunity costs and compare what you're doing to what you are
not, and most important, why you are
not.
My personal
thing now is to say yes to things that aren't always comfy, but are sure to
enrich my life more than they will inconvenience me. I've started to travel
more, I've started yoga and I'm trading diet soda for club soda with a splash
of cranberry. Next, I'm going to start producing more fiction, even if it's hard and complicated, and even if life hasn't answered all of the questions I
have for it, yet.
Yet.
Yet is a
very powerful word.
Yet means a
lot to a good friend of mine who is over fifty and has recruited friends to
form a competitive ski team. They are coaches mostly, experts all, and
thankfully at least one is both a patrol and a physician. They are all about
the same age, but it is the appetite for play that they have in common. They
call themselves "The Idiots," and wear shirts that feature
intentionally misspelled words.
That's
funny. That's even optmistic.
I have
another over-fifty friend who recently received her certification to teach
yoga. She looks like she did when I met her twenty years ago, but that wasn't
her aim. She knows that age brings hardships, but that time brings healing, which brings gifts of peace for the soul. To accept the former, my friend teaches people to
use their bodies to embrace the latter, and most of us can do it without falling over now.
For everybody who doesn't reach a certain age and settle in to kill time, there is a place they have not yet gone.
Yet.
Yet.
People who
aren't healthy about aging, well, we see them all the time. It's older men who
can't tell the difference between the interest and sympathy of a young woman
they've hit on. It's women who grow depressed and desperate with every new line
that doesn't disappear with a good sleep.
Viewing
ourselves like we come with expiration dates is bad enough. But I think it's worse that if only spared the ageist-culture hand mirror, many of us would not
believe we have a shelf life at all.
A person can hurt
their own feelings believing that culture knows more about their fate than they do.
Or one can
follow the example of two people I know who have shaped their opinions of self
around two things: what they do to remain vital, and knowing how to stay in
their place which is wherever they wish to be.
One is a
relative who was raised in Europe where, she says, the elderly are not merely
tolerated but revered. She has described family members who, in their nineties remain vital and engaged and ultimately, are cared for by other family members who honor their
wisdom and experience. Past seventy, she has an energy level thirty-year-olds would envy and she will likely remain an active tennis player well into her eighties.
Another one is my own mother, who, at nearly eighty, reads two books or more a week, follows a
clutch of morning news experts, and of late, has become outspoken on the political goings on. We're more than twenty years apart but there
is no opinion of hers, concerning anything I'm going through, that I don't
value for its roots in simpler, more sensible times.
As I think
about being over fifty again, I know that healthy people update.
They know when it's time to exit or at least pull over and look at the map
again. They don't quit, but recalculate. They change their minds, they honor
new or abandoned passions and redirect their energies, because they are
optimistic.
Mark Twain
was brilliant, of course. He is my choice when people ask those questions ten
minutes before a dinner party ends: "Who would you eat dinner with if you
could pick anyone, dead or alive?"
Because, that optimism crack aside, Mark and I would probably agree on the subject of beholding one's own beauty and place in life, and just who is in charge of that boat that brings one there.
