There are both advantages and disadvantages to being 73 years old. The biggest disadvantage is that a good part of your life (most of it) is behind you. Your professional career is likely over or very much winding down. While there are certainly notable exceptions (both good and bad) you probably have already made whatever impact you are going to make on the world. (An important exception being your family and close friends.)
You are definitely feeling the effects of age on both your mind and your body. At a bare minimum there are aches and pains, forgetfulness and the longing for a night's sleep without the constant interruptions brought on by myriad trips to the bathroom. If you have been both careful and lucky you are free of debilitating illness, have a healthy heart and are able to lead a reasonably active lifestyle. And again, if you have been really fortunate, you have a spouse as well as children and grandchildren all of whom enrich your life and give it a purpose that you hadn't even imagined fifty years earlier.
However, at the moment I am thinking about something else. Having lived seven decades plus, you have perspective — on the world, people, careers, importance and utter silliness. Perhaps most importantly you have perspective on yourself and how you grew, changed, even evolved to be the person that you are today. And if you are at all like me, you realize that regardless of how fortunate you have been in your life's circumstances — growing up in an upper middle class, stable and loving family, with access to education, holidays, summer camp and later on career support — it was not easy maturing from early childhood, through your teenage years into a grounded, "well-adjusted" and hopefully content and productive man.
I don't know whether, as a young boy, I was more awkward, goofy or insecure than everyone else around me — I don't think so. More than some; less than others. I do know that I paid an emotional price for not being athletic. I was among the last chosen in pickup games — "you take him; no, you" — and at summer camp I was pretty much always on the "C" team in softball, basketball and soccer. That does not do much for confidence or self-esteem. As I got a bit older and into high school I developed a handful of close friends, some of whom are still among my closest friends in the world. But I also remember sitting in Mr. Kaye's English class with other kids shooting spit balls at me.
As I physically (and emotionally) matured I naturally found myself thinking more and more about girls. But there weren't a lot of options for me. I think it was in eleventh grade when I finally got up the nerve to ask one of the prettier and more popular girls if she would go out with me. Somehow, I had two tickets for a Broadway show, and I managed to dial Barbara's number and ask to speak with her. She told me she would get back to me. That is the last time I ever spoke to her or she to me. Funny the things you remember.
As a senior in high school, I had a huge crush on a girl who seemed genuinely to like me as well. We spent time alone together doing what high school kids do, and we went out on dates pretty regularly. My memory is a bit hazy on this, but I do remember that for several months she insisted that we always go out of town. She didn't want to be seen with me locally, and I suppose I accepted that as the price I had to pay in order to have a girlfriend at all.
Though I did not get accepted by my first-choice college, I nevertheless went off to school with anticipation and excitement, if also a bit of fear. What followed were, without question, the four most difficult years of my life. For reasons that to this day I do not understand I fell into a severe state of sadness, depression and even despair. I know that I cried all the time — about exactly what I never knew. I took a leave midway through my second year and went on an extended trip across the country looking desperately for something I could not identify but even more so trying frantically to run away from myself. It was 3 am in the morning and I was standing on the side of Interstate 40 in the Texas Panhandle, alongside the broken-down used yellow MGBGT that I had purchased in LA (after hitch-hiking there from Seattle). I stood there with my right thumb pointing East, watching 18-wheelers rush by, half hoping someone would stop but half scared to death that someone actually would. (Think "Easy Rider.") I had a full beard and hair halfway down my back. Tears were running down my cheeks. If I wasn't at rock bottom, I was pretty damn close.
And that is why I am writing this piece.
I managed the rest of that desperate drive home to New York, stopping once in Indianapolis (on the entire drive from LA) to collapse into an exhausted but anxious sleep. But that was just the very beginning of a much longer, difficult but ultimately successful journey that brought me to now — a time when I genuinely feel comfortable with who and what I am; a moment when I am thankful for every day I have been alive and looking forward to whatever time I have ahead. No fear. Some professional regrets. Lots of amazement; tons of curiosity; grateful for the gift of life I was given.
I know that there are lots of young men and women feeling some, most or all of what I felt as a young man, and certainly some who are unfortunately in much harder and darker places than that scary highway in Texas. Self-doubt and criticism, loneliness, existential angst, sadness — they are all heavy burdens to carry. Perhaps it was the circumstances of my early childhood, having lost my biological father just two weeks before birth. But a painful and sometimes debilitating preoccupation with death began very early in my life. It lived within me every day. I wish I could apologize to my counselor at summer camp, who could not have been more than twenty years old himself, for getting stuck sitting on the bunk porch trying to grapple with a ten-year old boy deep in despair trying to make sense of our mortality.
I often felt like everything I was doing in my life — school, work, friends, travel, skiing and scuba diving, everything — I was just doing to distract me from the painful feelings and thoughts I could not shake. It took me literally 65 years to dispel those feelings and to ultimately make peace with a miraculous existence I had no hope of ever understanding. Thinking back, especially to the teenage years of my life, I often wonder how I made it to the other side?
I am not qualified in terms of education or training to offer any sort of universal, or meaningful advice on surviving teenage years, maturing into an adult or aging into a senior. And, of course, the world today is changed beyond recognition from the years during which I grew up and became an adult. Young people today face challenges and burdens that were totally unimaginable to someone born in 1953. When I hear within a single week of two heart donors who were both teenage boys who committed suicide, I know there are many standing on the precipice but countless more carrying emotional pain, loneliness and despair. And I know from my own experience that it can take literally most of a lifetime to fight back, find yourself, banish demons and ultimately find inner peace and satisfaction.
But I do believe that there are few things I can say, if not with authority, then at least with deep conviction. First, while the world may seem at this moment in time to be uniquely crazy, polarized, angry, and totally lacking in role models, keep in mind that every moment in history can appear that way. When I was a very young boy in elementary school we not only had fire drills but nuclear attack drills. What should you do in the event of a first-strike nuclear attack by the Soviets on New York — an event that while not likely was certainly within the realm of possibility. We had cities across the nation burning in racial protests and violence. John F. Kennedy, his brother Bobby and Martin Luther King Jr. all brought down by some combination of anger, political intrigue and a bullet.
For me personally I was shocked and frightened by all of these events but most impacted by the War in Vietnam. I will just say that I was beaming with pride to carry the American flag at my junior high school graduation. In college I was dismayed and left facing utter confusion to discover that my country was actually on the wrong side of history and that tens of thousands of young men just like myself were dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia doing the misguided bidding of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. As a consequence, I soon felt lost, without direction and lacking a supportive weltanschauung.
More importantly than any of this is the absolutely unshakeable truth that the journey from childhood to adulthood is doable. It is not easy growing up, aging, going through adolescence and maturing into an adult knowing throughout that soon enough you will ultimately have to confront the closing chapters of your life. Accepting that it is difficult is important but equally so is realizing the fact that you cannot do it alone. I never would have managed through my teenage years and early twenties if it had not been for the incredibly close and loving relationship that I had with my parents. Always with my mom. My relationship with my father took some time but was in the end equally important. Marrying my wife of almost 42 years and immediately taking on the role of fatherhood was transformative and life-saving.
I believe with all of my heart that the relationship between parent and child is special, unique and essential to both. It can and should be unconditional in both directions. Yes, I made mistakes growing up. In fact, plenty of them. I know I disappointed my parents on at least several occasions. But I never for an instant felt or believed that they loved me any less. And while there were times when I could not understand them, I knew they were always there for me with support, love, understanding and commitment. The strength of that bond was critical to me being able to overcome so much emotional distress, self-doubt and angst as a teenager. That same relationship with my own sons has enriched my adulthood and given so much more meaning and purpose to my life.
One thing I did not do well for a very long time was to open myself up emotionally and share my most deeply felt emotions, confusions, doubts and worries. I think I was afraid to be perceived as weak and judged harshly by friends, close relationships — both male and female — and colleagues. I was often told that I kept things bottled up inside. In hindsight it would have been so much better and productive not to mention enriching and satisfying to be more open about myself and my inner feelings. The impact on my sense of loneliness I can only imagine. Also, there is nothing wrong, weak or embarrassing about seeking out professional help. It can alter your life's trajectory, and I am sure in many cases actually save it.
Next, if you are able to, choose a career that you will find satisfying, as enriching financially as you want and can manage, but equally if not more importantly emotionally fulfilling. You will spend a good part of your life pursuing your chosen career and it will be one of the major ways in which you impact the world around you. Make sure it fits who and what you are as well as who and what you want to be. I didn't do as good a job as I could have in this regard and while not readily apparent to others, I have paid a price for that.
It seems an incredibly trite statement to say that "life goes by in the blink of an eye." More often than not it doesn't feel that way. You are busy growing up and aging — going to school; finding satisfying work; frequently having to do that over and over; finding a life partner; and if you are lucky (and choose to) raising children and then watching your grandchildren grow into these incredible human beings. But having reached 73 it now seems to have gone by staggeringly fast. You become your parents and then your grandparents. And while Progressive Insurance does a good job of helping you find humor in that transition, it is in reality serious stuff. I didn't see it at all as a young boy or a teenager and saw only hints of it as I aged into mid-life, but the truth is that every day is important. It is so clear to me now that your most important possessions in life are the very days of that life. It is all you have and all that you will ever have. It is how you leave any mark at all on the world — how you leave behind a legacy large or small.
And that brings me to my final thoughts and in some respects the closing of the circle. How do you face the fleeting nature of life and your own mortality? That young boy gripped and deeply troubled by thoughts of death has finally made his own personal peace with the truth that we all face something which goes by many names, but I call "existential angst." Quite recently I came to a literally life-altering realization. Having been constantly assaulted by all the talk by our tech-bro billionaires about living forever, I came to one of the most powerful insights of my entire life. The only thing worse than knowing you are going to die would be knowing that you were going to live forever. Think about that. We each have our time to live, to experience the world, to experience love and joy and sadness and remorse. But then it is time to be finished, to put down the benefits and burdens of life and leave it to those who come after us. For me at least, that has been incredibly liberating and satisfying. It is what we do with the days of our lives, our incredibly brief existence, that matters and allows us to live on in the hearts and minds of those we impact.
That insight has changed my entire outlook on life and filled me with excitement and enthusiasm for the many years that I hope are still ahead of me.