Sometimes I try to imagine what I’ll be like when I’m old.
It’s a mental exercise that’s half horror and half joke, and it comes to my mind most often in public: in grocery stores, restaurants, churches, parks – you know, the places you see older people. The other day, for instance, I passed a bent, white-haired man who was wearing a buttoned vest, sunglasses, and a bucket hat, hobbling along the Platte River path with shuffling steps that were punctuated by an ornate wooden walking stick. He looked very much like Sean Connery playing Henry Jones in The Last Crusade. We exchanged waves.
“When I’m his age,” I thought, “I hope I have his sense of style.”
Wishful thinking. I have a limited range, and I don’t think he shops at Target.
Most people, I believe, have some fear of getting old.
I definitely do. But when I poke at it, the fear is shifty like a piece of shell in beaten eggs, difficult to extract. It’s hard for me to say, “This, right here, is what scares me about aging.” Am I anxious about failing physical health? About my social role shifting? About losing skills? About losing friends? About losing hair?
Yeah, of course. But those things aren’t the sharpest bit.
If I had to put a thumb on it, I think the underpinning is a desire for control. I want to drive my life by myself, alone, picking my own path out like I’m riding a motorcycle. But the farther out in the future I look, the harder the handlebars are to find, and the more I doubt the capability of my hands to steer.
Earlier this week, Alli and I had a conversation with friends about the people we most admire.
Our friends named a couple in their 40s, citing admiration for how they’re raising their family. Everyone I thought of was old.
There’s a man from church, for example, who’s in his 70s and who exudes a cheerful peacefulness. We get coffee together sometimes. I find time with him refreshing to a degree that’s almost surprising. I think it’s because he doesn’t require anything from me to be comfortable with himself. More than that, I don’t think there’s much I could do to change my standing in his eyes. There’s no pressure.
That sort of presence offers a permission unconsciously looked for and rarely found: You don’t have to be impressive. In fact, you can’t be.
You can stop striving and rest. You’re loved outside of it all.
I hope that’s what I’m like when I’m older.
I have a feeling that you only get there by surrendering control. You find peace with the fact that you don’t hold the handlebars of your life all that firmly, and maybe you find that rather than steering a motorcycle, you were only holding the handles of an inner tube, drifting lazily down the river.
Does consenting to the current of life give you back control, somehow?
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll figure it out when I’m older. Hopefully I’ll be wearing a vest, sunglasses, and a bucket hat.
