Today is my father’s birthday. He would have been 102. I didn’t expect him to live that long. I don’t expect to live that long. But I hope I don’t die at 70, like he did.
But the weird thing is my dad’s birthday no longer feels weird anymore, I don’t get that pang, of remembrance, of loss. Maybe because I’m close to the end myself. That’s the way the world works. And what they tell you is true, it goes by in the blink of an eye, not that that will affect anything you do.
I heard a great one yesterday. There are three stages of life. Childhood, adulthood, and GEE, YOU LOOK TERRIFIC!
You reach a certain age and they throw you on the scrapheap. Some hang on dearly for relevance, afraid to go through the door into the next room, to continue their passage through life. Yes, there are those who get plastic surgery, wear the clothing of kids, but they’re just laughable, no one buys it, no matter what they think. But there are those who don’t realize that at a certain point…it’s time to go. You’ve got to give up the reins to the next generation. It’s hard, but as much as you know, they need to gain experience. Chris Rock said men get married because they don’t want to be the oldest guy in the bar. Once you go to the conference, once you show up at the meeting and you’re the oldest person in the room… Ask yourself what you are contributing. Ask yourself whether your time is done.
It’s a conundrum, because people can be healthy and alert and can contribute into their nineties, Norman Lear into triple digits. But, if you forestall or forgo the last chapter of life, the joke is on you.
The last chapter… Nothing matters. Hopefully you’ve got enough money to get by, but no one is envying your capital, your lifestyle. You see you reach a certain age and you become comfortable with who you are. You lived your life, you made your choices, you are who you are, not anybody else.
And it’s weird entering this third phase of life. Because they prepare you for the first two, but not the third. No one wants to talk about it, we revere the youth, their skin, their opportunity, when in truth we’d never want to go back to those times. We want more time, but not as an uneducated uninformed adolescent. We don’t want the foibles and horrors of dating for the first time. We don’t want to be broke. We worked our entire lives to pull ourselves out of those depths, we don’t want to go back.
So you have wisdom, but the young don’t want to listen. Even worse, they don’t get the references. You’ve got your own music and movies and maybe they’re aware of a little, but not much. And what was important to you is not important to them. Is anybody going to remember the Marx Brothers? W.C. Fields? We didn’t have Esports, our time was occupied otherwise, and they don’t care.
I go to see this heart doctor. She costs a fortune. I’d like not to pay, but my friend Judd died of a heart attack at 67 and…I always wonder if he got better treatment whether he’d still be here.
But treatment costs.
So she runs all these tests. And in the modern, digitized world, you get the results sent to you, you don’t have to wait to see the doctor. And I got this heart angiogram on a Friday afternoon and mere hours later, I got the results. My calcium score was 293. The report said I was going to have a heart attack in 3-5 years. WHAT?????
Believe me, I was bummed for the ten days I had to wait until I saw the doctor.
She said they were looking to see if the number doubled every year, that if I was in the thousands I’d be in trouble, because five years before I’d had 117. But in the nineties I had zero. Rust never sleeps. It’s going to happen to all of us. And my ultrasound showed a 20% blockage in the neck artery on one side and… Once again, the doctor said this was pretty good. And she reiterated that every patient she sees has never had a heart attack, and she told me not to be the first!
And I calmed down, but what about everybody else?
And the truth is you can be on it, seeing every doctor, and still be cut down at a young age. And you can ignore your health and live to a hundred. I look around at all the people, mostly guys, who mistreat themselves and wonder how long they’re going to last. They think they’re going to live forever, but nobody does, even Sumner Redstone.
It won’t be long before Sumner’s empire is broken up completely. Illustrating that if you’re doing it to leave a mark, don’t. No one will be remembered.
And there are all these people preaching answers.
But you get old enough and you realize all the answers are within. That your opinion is just as good as anybody else’s. And that we truly are the same. That person who projects an image, that other person you put on a pedestal… Spend some time with them and you’ll see they are no different from you, truly. And those who think they’re better… Old people start to laugh at them.
And you wake up one day and everybody is sick. Not only are people asking you about your health, it seems every week, maybe every few days, you find out another person has cancer or some other malady. And then there are those that die. They’re thinning the herd, are you next? It’s like a real life “Squid Game.”
And you don’t want to move to Florida, you don’t want to be dead, but so many boomers already are, i.e. they’re not doing much and just waiting to die. Use it or lose it. Be active or the end will come sooner.
And the hoops you jumped through… They take those away. There are no grades at a certain age, no awards. You’re just living. If you’re looking for accolades from others, forget about it. You realize the game is b.s. You laugh at those who continue to buy into it. You’re no longer susceptible to advertising, to hype, if something is truly great you’ll hear about it, and you don’t have to hear about it on day one, you can wait.
You may be working, but the people you know, they’re pulling the ripcord.
And you realize all that you will never do or accomplish. You won’t make it to this country, or that. And you’d better do what you want now because at some point you will become physically unable, oftentimes through no fault of your own. Modern medicine can replace your hip, put in a new knee, but you’d be stunned what it can’t do, even worse they’ll be able to do certain stuff that would have helped you but you’ll already be dead.
My father lived in a different era.
But even now I’ve lived in a different era. Three TV networks! Six major label groups! A veritable monoculture, where everybody was on the same page and knew the same things and if you weren’t you were ostracized.
And marijuana is legal, but democracy is in peril. Both unfathomable if you’re a boomer.
And you start to accept that perfection is elusive, and rarely achieved.
Your new car squeaks or rattles, or something doesn’t work, or is designed poorly. And no one can fix it. The whole world is broken, the fact that it functions at all is amazing.
And tyrants like Putin… You start to wonder who he is, how he grew up, that he would behave this way. Why? You grew up and wanted to run a country and boss people around? Who does that? I didn’t grow up with anybody like that.
I grew up with people who got jobs and are now retired. I didn’t grow up with NBA players or movie stars or musicians with hit records. But today, everybody can get noticed. And the goal of the elite is not to be a doctor or a lawyer, but to work at the bank.
And musical stars are known for their shenanigans as opposed to their music.
And the biggest stars on screen are cartoon characters, even if they’re played by real life people.
I can complain all I want, but no one is listening.
But there are tens of millions who feel the same way I do, who get it. Who know that our ship has sailed, we’re in the rearview mirror.
But there is a silver lining, it’s liberating. You’re comfortable in your own skin. You don’t suffer fools. And your life becomes self-directed. Some people function better than others once they’re set out to pasture. Some need structure to survive. But structure is for the young. The old have graduated.
But it’s a secret. No one admits they’re old. All the ink is negative. You get to the point where you feel you don’t even exist.
And then you realize it was always this way.
And then you start to question your choices.
And then you realize your parents made you who you are, you can’t believe how similar to them you are.
And then you realize this is it, your life. There’s a chapter to be written…
But you’re the only one who is going to read it.Â
