Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock
Any number of self-appointed TV experts in recent months say either “40 is the new 20” and “60 is the new 40.” Oprah Winfrey said the latter to David Letterman when she interviewed him a couple of weeks ago. They were discussing his toddler son. Actually, that would mean 60 is the new 25. Parents in their early 40s often-as-not are raising teenagers at that point.
In a few weeks I hit a five-or-zero milestone birthday. Can I drop to a lower five or zero and fool others, or myself? I am in excellent health, have a vital, contrary attitude most of the time, and my hair still is brown. Wellll: My left ear is shot, the dentist says I’ve started to grind my teeth when asleep, and was that a chest pain in July? My nonconformity has been rocked during my 40s by how unattractive it is to people who can not only mar your present but your future. Last, my brown hair for two years has had gray flecks.
Any number of acquaintances guess my age to be five to 10 years younger than what my driver’s license insists. Most days I could get by with dropping to 42. I could add to today’s slick phrasing and boast that my mix of fairly clean habits proves 50 is the new 40. Yet it would be pushing it to give the more common 20-year range that 50 is the new 30. I don’t feel 30, don’t feel 40, either.
As summer ends, I realize I don’t want to try. I’m going to turn 50 on what would be Election Day 2007. Not 40, not 30.
My daily first glance in the bathroom mirror would scare Vincent Price. The reflection is of a 49-year-old, and those eye bags tick me off. (A toilette, breakfast and caffeine take off about a decade. Try it!) But I don’t want to give either the puffiness or the sagginess back, nor the frown I seem to wear too often through the day and into the night.
I’ve earned them.
The national “60 is the new 40” refers to the luxury of American health care and our abundance overall. Letterman can have a stable relationship with a young, fertile woman and despite heart surgery reasonably can expect to see his boy graduate from college. Then, “40 is the new 20” refers first to personal energy and motivation but also to Americans’ increasingly prolonged adolescence. There’s any number of 20-somethings still living at home — 25 is the new 15 — only learning independence in their 30s. Then comes love, then comes marriage then comes the rest.
The 60-to-40 and 40-to-20 generally refers to major second chances and mid-life career turnabouts, to say nothing of leaving Spouse One for the opportunity to try again. I’ve changed careers then changed again. I skipped failing at a youthful marriage, waiting to my mid-30s to start my one and only marriage.
Sure, I have lots of regrets about the three decades of adulthood. Some are piercingly huge, such as job choices and perhaps family size. One’s own decisions and the good or sour luck of the impact of others’ decisions on you, though, make predictions about the alternate courses of one’s life wild, sad guesses. No one knows what could have been, not really. It’s natural to agonize over the past, a habit that as annoying as scratching.
Jeff Zaslow’s column in the Sept. 20, 2007, Wall Street Journal quotes Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch as having said, “Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things.”
Hey, self-conscious 60-year-olds and 40-year-olds, you do what seems right. As for me, I can accept age-appropriate physical aging, knowing how fortunate I am in health. The gray? Most men get bald, and that’s not in my genes. Hah! Non-conformity? I’m miserable when I toe someone else’s line, and when I do try it, it still never works out.
Yes, dump the regrets. I have worked hard for whatever wisdom I’ve figured out. The humiliation of some mistakes and the horror of some preventable accidents had to happen. If these didn’t, others would have come along.
I’m taking my 50 years and moving toward 51, 64, even 82 with luck.
I may look 42, act 28 and feel 17 — on good days — but the calendar is about to say 50. I own all of my years, and I’m not giving them back.
Fifty is the new fifty.
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