Disclaimer: If this feels reductionary or is offensive to people past 65, I apologize. It was a fun brain and writing exercise borne during breakfast when my mother and I had this spell-binding conversation:
Me: I think I'm going to be a good old person.
Ellen: You're going to be a great old person!
(5 second pause)
But why do you say that?
I Will Be a Good Old Person (My Vow To Me)
I think I’m going to be a good old person. I’m really well suited to the activities of the elderly—reading and talking and thinking about things too much. Old people have a lot of time to think about things, and I assume they aren’t quite so tied up in the neuroses of the fresh and self-conscious. I’ll finally be able to stop worrying so much about my Self and my “Direction,” because at that point I’ll either have screwed things up or I won’t have. When you’re young the future is always there, looming, a presence. Even when you say “fuck it, I don’t care about the future, I’m going to do ALL these drugs,” you’re still making an active decision to ignore what may be. Old people don’t have that weight. They have the weight of their past—which I’m sure is an entirely different burden I cannot begin to conceive of—but this is an encumbrance the elderly are much more equipped to handle because of all that perspective they’ve accrued over the past 70 years. A great thing about living is that you can’t not gain perspective the longer you do it. Even if you locked yourself up in an empty room
for years, stared only at blank walls and counted to one hundred again and
again—what an experience! In my mind, a horrible one! Why did you do
that? But look! It happened!
Regardless of how happy and connected and self-actualized I am, there will (most likely) always be a small, subconscious part of me worried about screwing it up. “It” being the cultivation of a sustainable and fulfilling life. I will (most likely) feel this way until it’s no longer an option on the table. Until one day I wake up and either have enough money to take it a bit easier or am living under a bridge.* And I’ll look back on my life—now the bulk of my earthly experiences—and say “today I’m going to read Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd. I will contemplate public policy, and the events unfolding overseas, and I will do it with very little of myself getting in the way. Myself has had it’s time to be, and now I will be completely and fully for other people, and within the world, and soak the last of it up while I can. It will be a relief to step aside in this way.
I keep a list of the books I have read, because the thing that still scares me the most is forgetting.
Of course it will be hard. It’s going to be disappointing because I am so close to death and my body is slowly deteriorating, but I will make peace with that and work on being mindful. I will have mornings when I don’t feel like getting up because my catalogue of aches has grown inexplicably more expansive, or the diverse array of pills awaiting consumption seems suddenly impossible to stomach. A mountain of pills, surrounded by a moat of creatures that sliver and chomp. I will chop their heads off and begin the ascent.
I will look in the mirror and think,“Very little about this is pleasant. I am no longer an entity that is nice to look at,” and I will learn that there is freedom in this. Mostly I read, but will occasionally indulge a movie or TV show. There was a time 10 years ago when media portrayals of the elderly frustrated me—“we’re not just kindly grandmothers, old shells waiting to expire!”—but these feelings have passed. Now there is resignation, but a kind that rings of acceptance rather than exhaustion. I will be exhausted. Some days will be wholly exhausting. But I will remember the people who have loved me and that I have loved in return. I will read ancient histories—Greek, Roman, Egyptian—and feel confident there will be no test. I will devour tales of conquest, love, hatred, grief, and growth. They march past with drama, a colorful fanfare of others who have exploded into this world and did what they could with it. Some stories may linger, and they are warmly welcomed. The brevity of their stay is no longer cause for sadness.
Hopefully I will have people in my life to care for, but I don’t like to assume. If I do, these people will mean a great deal to me. I will live vicariously through the discoveries of the young and I will have time to truly know the humans surrounding me. Sometimes I will hear of adolescent hardship and I will feel a pang of nostalgia—if only I had known back then. If only I had truly appreciated.
When I am in the presence of others, I will ask them the questions I was once too self-absorbed to formulate, voice the thoughts I was once too self-conscious to say.
I try to garden but it’s hard on my back.
I spend time cooking elaborate meals.
I occasionally invite loved ones over for dinner and they're so sorry but things are crazy right now.
Soccer practice runs late, trouble at school, the business is finally taking off.
Things are crazy, but definitely some other time.
The list of books continues to grow.
*please note that if I am ever forced to live under a bridge, there is no way I won’t be in Japan. I will be sitting there, under a Japanese bridge, and even if it’s the worst I will be in Japan.
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