"We more easily accept the world as is, even as we doggedly keep trying to save it, like aging Smurfs.... I’m not loving the cognitive decline, which can be so scary at the time but (for me, in the early throes) still ends up being sort of funny.... We finally realize we can’t save or fix or rescue anyone, even and especially those we most love. We stop rushing to people’s sides like arthritic St. Bernards with kegs of brandy strapped around our necks. We’ve learned that we cannot reshape their lives, get in there swinging and carry their pain for them. Now? We mostly listen. Sometimes, we lay some money on them. We are lighter than we’ve ever been...."
Writes Anne Lamott, in
"Gentle is the joy that comes with age/It turns out the point of life is gratitude. And gratitude is joy" (WaPo)(free-access link/the illustration is especially nice, especially if you like cats used to express a pleasant way of life for someone who is no longer doggedly trying to save the world).
Lamott is only 70. Is she really in "cognitive decline" — the "early throes"?
Posts
88 comments:
...no longer doggedly trying to save the world is brilliantly coupled to if you like cats.
Dogged cat fanciers unite! You have nothing to lose but your litter box spatulas.
I am nearly 54. Hair thinning and greying, waist line expanding, energy declining, teeth ever moving, always tired, always working. The mind does not function like 5 years ago.
But contentment, acceptance off the charts. I can't control my wife or anyone else. So, I don't worry about them/it, as they won't listen anyway.
Death used to scare me. No longer does it. I just hope it is instant and not a long illness.
Cheers!
you like cats used to express a pleasant way of life for someone who is no longer doggedly trying to save the world).
Interesting sentence.
Is she now cattily trying to save the world?
John Henry
In decline at 70? Did she lead a healthy lifestyle?
Writing for The Washington Post, isn't that paradigm case of cognitive decline?
Lamott is only 70. Is she really in "cognitive decline" — the "early throes"?
Define "cognitive decline". Most 70 year olds occasionally find themselves struggling to recall a name or a word. Ever walk into a room and ask yourself why you are there?
I've observed that as you age it is good to have an extensive vocabulary. It allows you to work around the senior moments. In that regard, Ann, I envy your command of the English language.
She’s voting for Biden.
Ambition falls away.
True dat.
Cicero (De Senectute) says it's calm because you stop chasing pussy.
Lamott is only 70. Is she really in "cognitive decline"
i've noticed (in others) that THE FIRST THING TO GO is the ability to notice your decline.
I asked my mom (when she was about 80,) if she thought she had slipped any.. She said: "Oh NO!"
which meant that SHE was THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD that hadn't noticed it..
Professor Althouse.. Do YOU think you'd be able to go back to teaching today?
Not asking If you'd want to.. Asking if YOU think you COULD. Careful this is a trick question
ps. i'm only 62. I'm young enough to still be aware that i'm slipping.. Ask ME in ten years
39 We come now to the third ground for abusing old age, and that is, that it is devoid of sensual pleasures. O glorious boon of age, if it does indeed free us from youth's most vicious fault! Now listen, most noble young men, to what that remarkably great and distinguished man, Archytas of Tarentum, said in an ancient speech repeated to me when I was a young man serving with Quintus Maximus at Tarentum: "No more deadly curse," said he, "has been given by nature to man than carnal pleasure, through eagerness for which the passions are driven recklessly and uncontrollably to its gratification. [Legamen ad versionem Latinam]40 From it come treason and the overthrow of states; and from it spring secret and corrupt conferences with public foes. In short, there is no criminal purpose and no evil deed which the lust for pleasure will not drive men to undertake. Indeed, rape, adultery, and every like offence are set in motion by the enticements of pleasure and by nothing else; and since nature — or some god, perhaps — has given to man nothing more excellent than his intellect, therefore this divine gift has no deadlier foe than pleasure; [Legamen ad versionem Latinam]41 for p51 where lust holds despotic sway self-control has no place, and in pleasure's realm there is not a spot where virtue can put her foot.
I'm about 2 months older than Anne Lamott. I can relate to much of what she's feeling, but maybe not at the extremes that she's laying out. She does sound more like someone in their early 80s than someone just turned 70 in April. But I get the tone of it, I get and agree with her description of how we, at this age, look at things versus how we did in those earlier invulnerable days.
Now I grope for words I know. Often in mid-sentence while writing, or even speaking. That's a worry. But I do mental exercises all day via reading, writing, learning new things, trying to keep my mind sharp, sharper, sharpest. I sleep less than ever and not sure if this is just how it's going to be, or if there is something in this world I have not already tried over the last 35 or so years. I still order or buy foods to cook in volumes I would have consumed when I was 35, but now cannot even come close to eating that much. Still, my instincts are to go with the whole hoagie, not the half. I watch my old dog moving slower each day, now getting terrified by the daily Florida storms that she once never blinked at. I watch her stare at the one step coming into our house as if it's a mile of steps and I wonder if she notices things in me that are slower. Like getting out of bed in the morning. I watch her watch me and think, she sees it too, doesn't she?
And I know that I often write things on the Althouse blog that are very personal and may be off-topic, or simply don't belong here. But...at this point in my life, I honestly don't care. Anne Lamott and I have that much in common.
There's no airhead like and old airhead.
Piss off Lamott, I'm a curmudgeon.
Althouse:
Lamott is only 70. Is she really in "cognitive decline" — the "early throes"?
Reads like it.
Old age, senescence, decline of physical and mental ability, it all really just sucks. Except the only alternative, death, is usually worse.
I turn 67 next month.
Now, more than ever, I don’t care what people think about me. That’s part of the reason why I’m so vocal in opposing wind and solar at OPPD. Last month I told the OPPD Board that they are the problem.
Life is like a progressive bell curve. Karma or threat?
Well..... I'm grateful every day, glad to wake up, thrilled to still be experiencing new things, and still curious enough to look for them. Gratitude is the most underrated human emotion - she's dead right about that.
From Book 1 of Plato's Republic:
For let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great he will many a time like a child start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is the kind nurse of his age:
Hope, he says, cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey; --hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man.
How admirable are his words! And the great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally; and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men. Now to this peace of mind the possession of wealth greatly contributes; and therefore I say, that, setting one thing against another, of the many advantages which wealth has to give, to a man of sense this is in my opinion the greatest.
"I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
Good article for me this morning.
74 yrs. old and well aware of declining mental and physical issues. Very content with my life, nonetheless.
If I could only get over my sadness regarding the poor mental/rational faculties of the Homo Sapien collective. Maybe the species that follows us will be better.
"Professor Althouse.. Do YOU think you'd be able to go back to teaching today?"
That's not a good question. I think I'd have done better at the time if I'd had some mental decline.
I am only 69! I find that I can't think of names often. I don't really believe I'm slipping, rather over 40 plus years of seeing thousands of patients my hard drive is full. The brain drops out the old ones to make room for the new ones. I have actually had several instances where I thought of a solution to a minor problem that had eluded me for 30 years. (How to be certain the blanket and comforter go on correctly the first time as an example) You may not know why you are where you are, but you know where it is! The shorter sleep cycle allows you to go take pictures at the lake at 4:30 am. Anyway, your life and priorities have changed. Your children are full fledged adults. You have grandchildren. Your focus has changed. I don't believe the aging has changed us, rather the place into which the years have led us.
I, too, forget words that I haven’t used in quite some time. But at least I remember them (albeit somewhat later) probably 95% of the time without “cheating “ via search engine. I am 71. My main problem is osteoarthritis, which I consider inherited as both parents also had it. I’m trying to squeeze in more traveling before it becomes too difficult. I acknowledge my aging but believe in a heavenly home for my soul when it leaves this mortal coil. People can still strive to “save” this world, but the book of Revelation tells Christians to hang in there even though it’s not going to work.
Cognitive decline is a spectrum. We are all on it.
Cognitive decline can be reversed. Just as you exercise your muscles you exercise your neurons and the glial system that feeds it.
If you eat bad food you get fat and weak. If you eat bad food your neurological systems get fat and weak.
If you sit around and watch TV you get fat and weak. If you sit around and watch TV your neurological systems get fat and weak.
We know the causes of cognitive decline. But telling people to stop eating carbohydrates and vegetable oil would threaten billion dollar industries.
And a lot of people are involved in people eating wheat specifically.
I'm doing significantly more challenging mental problems now, for enjoyment, than I did during my career because I have the luxury to study what I want, not what I have to. Hopefully it helps stave off mental decline. At least I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
At 79 I am that proverbial old fool that there's no fool like.
What we lose most with age is the drive to do difficult things. People are more willing to settle and rest.
The ones who resist this age better than the ones who sit down and rest.
Seventy for most people is late middle age. There are lots of exceptions, however.
And some poor souls are so exceptional they don't live to see seventy. The big plus about being an octogenarian is that you know with absolute certainty that you will live to be eighty. ....Old age is not so bad. If I were given the choice between living over my senescence or adolescence, I would definitely choose senescence....I don't at this stage of my life believe in God. In the absence of God, it's hard to find the bright side of death. I suppose it's better than a painful illness but beyond that nothing.
I am nearly 72 years of age.
Why must I chase the cat?
Must be the dog in me.
Something I wrote at 70:
WORKING
Stand at the ass end of the shop
Mixing a batch of glue
Stare through the winter soiled windows
It is March, again.
Lamb and the Lion Month
All things finally focus inward.
Well, except this chair I am gluing.
Reality is slivers of wood, dull drill bits
Slowly rusting.
Dust building slowly On lumber piles
I rebuild the bandsaw
A job delayed thirty years Another tool beckons, the jointer
At 70, one looks back to the years of ambition
I glue another chair
There is an actress whom I like in movies, whose name I can never remember except as "Warren Beaty's sister, you know, she used to be a dancer, she was in Terms of Endearment..." It's very frustrating, but it will come to me soon enough. Probably if I ever do spare her a thought when not watching her in movies, I put her face in there and maybe her body in that dancing outfit in All That Jazz, if its the same woman, instead of a name.
imTay,
I immediately thought, “Shirley MacLaine.” I haven’t watched anything of hers in years. We older people just need to combine our “resources” to survive. LOL!
And at election time, seniors joyfully, gratefully vote to keep their benefits. Around the world. Ef you, youngsters. You take care of the debt.
Ann Althouse said...
"Professor Althouse.. Do YOU think you'd be able to go back to teaching today?"
That's not a good question. I think I'd have done better at the time if I'd had some mental decline.
yep.. AS I SAID.. The first thing to go, is the awareness that you are going.
Elliott A said...
I am only 69! I find that I can't think of names often. I don't really believe I'm slipping..
the first thing to go..
The old saw i find MOST Humorous is:
"I could STILL do all that stuff.. I just don't really feel like it now"
I could be still working.. I just don't really feel like it now
There was this old fart, back in the office; he was 57 and STILL trying to keep up.. We LAUGHED AND LAUGHED
For me it’s a mixed bag. Like a lot of other people my age I sometimes can’t quite pull up a name or sometimes I have to reach for a word that I’ve known and used since high school. These aren’t permanent holes in my memory — just random gaps that occur and then might not reoccur for months or years (or never reoccur). Fortunately I have a large vocabulary so if I can’t pull up a word I can often quickly substitute a synonym.
But I’ve been coping with that sort of thing since my forties. So no big deal.
I look for ways to test my math and analytical skills, and they are blessedly intact. Can I still get through at least one technical article in an advanced technical journal (e.g., Communications of the ACM) every month? Can I still work an advanced difficulty Sudoku puzzle? If I started losing it there, I’d be upset.
I have always heard that as you get older, you tend to sleep less. Didn't turn out that way for me, I'm up to about 10 hours now.
I use a thesaurus now, which is something I never did in the past, I figured they were for wimps, and not to find some spanking new word to tart up some writing, but because I know damn well that the word I am reaching for is the exact right word, and I just can't remember it. It works pretty good.
Also you can ask ChatGPT, "What's the word that means the same thing as pulley, except on a sailboat they don't call them that..."
Here is what it said:
The word you're looking for is "block." In sailing terminology, a block is a type of pulley used on sailboats to help manage and control the ropes (also known as lines) that adjust the sails.
I suppose you can use Google in the same way, but ChatGPT is a lot more flexible and intuitive. Google would give me three pages of links to companies that bid on the search terms trying to sell me sailing tackle.
I retired at 70, teaching very smart young people aged 30ish.
They knew a lot of stuff that I did not, but I knew how to do and how to figure out a lot of stuff that they did not. Most of them knew essentially zero history- not surprising that they could not name the president when I was born (Truman), but most of them could not name the last 4 or 5 presidents. I grew up "bilingual" in metric and standard American units (never lived outside the USA)- they can't convert without using their iphones; despite drinking half liter bottles of water or energy drinks all day every day they could not tell me that a liter is a bit more than a quart. I dazzled them with my ability to (still) estimate large numbers using exponents in my head.
I suspect most of them could not get from one state to the next using a paper map; they probably could not fold the map after use, but they sure knew how to use GPS.
Different people and generations value different skills and knowledge.
I told them, "I'm smarter than I look." Most of them were smart enough not to respond.
Progressive cognition (PC) is, unfortunately, or fortunately, an inevitable quality of life.
Loved her approach to Grandparent hood. That comes soon after Empty Nester hood. It’s a lesson in letting go of control over the next generation and then the next generation after that. It’s also called attaining wise-dom.
When I told my doctor my greatest fear was losing my mental acuity, he suggested I purchase "Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting". I skipped most of the first chapters and immediately went to the chapter on types of memory loss (words, names of people, ) and what was going on brain-wise.
It helped to know that no matter one's age, if your vocabulary is huge - you are going to struggle to find the "perfect" word whereas most people will simply go with a common word that's "close enough".
An interesting form of forgetfulness affected my mother. My parents had 3 sons and 1 daughter, of whom I am the middle son. The older and younger son each had 3 sons and no daughters. So my mother had 3 sets of male descendants: 3 sons, 3 grandsons from the oldest son, and 3 grandsons from the youngest son.
Starting when she was in her '60s - which seemed rather young - she mixed up our names, but not our numbers. That is, she would call me (#2 son), #2 grandson, and #5 grandson by each other's names, but never by the names of any of the other 6, and similarly with the oldest and youngest in each set of 3. None of our names were the sort to encourage mixups. Anyway, when I first noticed the pattern and said "Mom! You're calling us by our numbers, not our names!" she was rather embarrassed, but kept doing it for ~20 years until she died.
Boomers making realizations others make at age 21.
"It helped to know that no matter one's age, if your vocabulary is huge - you are going to struggle to find the "perfect" word whereas most people will simply go with a common word that's "close enough"."
I have done that my entire life; stumble over an internal debate over the "perfect" word.
I had a brilliant professor in grad school who wasn't the best communicator. You could watch the thinking process going on in his head. I had a whole semester's worth of notes of his blackboard utterances. The one that comes to mind at the moment is; {pause} "Let me take back what I was just going to say.". Ahh, ok.
IIRC someone wrote on this very blog, just last week:
"Wisdom often comes with age---- unless you have always been clueless."
*****************
Original Mike said...
"Let me take back what I was just going to say.". Ahh, ok.
I had a calculus prof who wrote out his proofs across the whiteboard with his right hand, while erasing them with his left.
It was kinda tough for his students to take notes.
Most 70 year olds occasionally find themselves struggling to recall a name or a word. Ever walk into a room and ask yourself why you are there?
I have always had this problem. I assumed it was undiagnosed ADD.
I'm in my 60s and, in many ways, feel mentally sharper than I did in my 20s. Wiser, certainly. I also have gotten much better at letting annoying people not annoy me so I can respond to them rationally instead of emotionally. Except with people who drive in the rain without turning their headlights on. I still get pretty emotional when I yell at them and tell them this is why even their dog avoids them.
You can keep your own corner tidy and help a bit knowing you can't save those who won't save themselves. Cherish the time as you approach the pre Labor Day weekend of your life.
A high school friend and I recently realized we were each the person we had known the longest, and we even remembered details of when we met.
Speaking about aging, I assured him (and myself) that I still had all my marbles.
He responded, "Well, you never had that many to begin with."
heh
"I have always had this problem. I assumed it was undiagnosed ADD."
Me too. I decide to go to the room for some purpose, my brain sets my body in motion, then it moves onto the next 3 things. Have done it my entire life.
My biggest and most noticeable memory issue is with names. Especially actors. Like the comment above. It would have taken me awhile. I knew it was Shirley MacLaine but couldn’t think of her name. I could rattle off many of her movies, though. Just yesterday, I realized I couldn’t remember the name of the small town closest to our cabin in the Sierras. I was horrified. It was an important part of my life for years. But…not for the last 40 years. So, I think I can cut myself some slack on that one.
Elliot A said
"I don't believe the aging has changed us, rather the place into which the years have led us."
I kinda go with this. I forget names too, but the names I forget are names that life hasn't refreshed for me by hearing them again. And they come back to me, later. No, what I notice is the different life that time has brought me to. It's not just that I have little, now useless skills I haven't forgotten. (I knew how to fill a fountain pen; I worked on computers before there was DOS (which was before Windows; I could meet a train without synchronizing by phone texting - and there were trains to meet with people on them.) It's that the question of how to do a job and how to raise children was the urgent question of my generation - once, a long time ago. Now we watch another generation for whom all that is an urgent question. we help more by shutting up, we can see that. Maybe I'll toss in a comment but I won't say: "Why do you never listen, you're always doing that, what are you going to do when the net goes down?" And, with the sound of my voice out of my ears, I do hear silence and flowers better. Who will that help or what will it do? Whatever it is, it's the place you come too just before you leave for the last time.
I am my family's memory of last resort. Several years ago at my brother's house for Thanksgiving he came down to the basement:
Mike, who is the Man From UNCLE?
Napoleon Solo.
No, the actor.
Robert Vaughn.
Could you go up there and tell them? They've been arguing over who that actor is in Bullit.
*upstairs*
Dad - that guy - Robert Vaughn.
Thanks!
‘Lamott is only 70. Is she really in "cognitive decline" — the "early throes"?’
I don’t know I’m only 63, and I’m definitely not as sharp as I used to be.
When drafting old folks Wills you have to deal with the possible attack by heirs on grounds of forgetfulness. It’s called the pretermitted child caveat. That means Daddy forgot me when listing beneficiaries and he would never do that.
Until the last 60 years or so most families had 12 or so children. So just leaving one off the list could be an accident. The draftsman’s job was to at least list them all even if some got nothing. Also intentional bequests of a small amount accomplished the intent to disinherit that one. Further in wealthy families that would be accompanied by a relatively small cash bequest with in terrorem condition that took it away if a Caveat to the will was filed by that child.
Take heart. A properly drafted Will is 99.9% unbreakable. Even Joe Biden still has Testamentary capacity if he still has lucid intervals. But there are professional rings targeting older rich widowed guys to marry them a few months before they suddenly die. They are usually Eastern European suck up types 40 years younger than their mark.
“Blogger EAB said...
My biggest and most noticeable memory issue is with names. Especially actors.”
Me, too. What’s up with that?
I now (71) have almost as many brainfarts as real ones on any given day. And I find myself thinking about the hereafter more often--as in, "What did I come in here after?"
I've always required a lot of sleep but now I do more of it in the recliner of an afternoon than I used to.
I've never been good at giving (or taking) life advice, so that's not really an issue.
Our brains are not fully developed until we reach approximately 26. (That's one reason that car insurance rates decline at that age).
It's all downhill from there.
Of course, we can develop skills that make better use of our cognitive powers.
At 71, I notice some word finding problems and a few issues with recent memory. However, I keep my brain active to rest the inevitable decline.
As the saying goes, "Don't let the old man in." This lady is giving up early.
Shortly before she died, Nora Ephron observed that however crappy you presently feel in a few years time it will seem like some kind of golden age....Alexa has solved a lot of my short term memory problems, but sometimes I forget to ask her to remind me. ...I sleep less, but I'm prone and passive for longer periods of time. Sometimes I lack the energy to watch television. I just lay in bed and wonder whether I should worry about that pain in my shoulder....A lot of the so called wisdom of age can be attributed to lack of energy. Your enemy has gotten older and far less libidinal....I don't think it's possible for a person to observe his own cognitive declines with any degree of accuracy or objectivity. I do Duolingo. It takes me about the same amount of time each day to get through the lesson. That's proof positive that I haven't lost a step and a sure sign that I'm as good as ever.
Death used to scare me. No longer does it. I just hope it is instant and not a long illness.
Death per se no longer scares me either, and if I can unexpectedly snuff it in my sleep like my old man did, I won't regret a thing. My mom, on the other hand, lingered for more than a year before her demise with an aggressive form of Parkinsonism, and I do not relish that prospect. Thankfully the men in my family mostly die suddenly of heart attacks in their 80's, and cancer is almost unheard of among us, even in our remote relatives.
Cherish the time as you approach the pre Labor Day weekend of your life.
A friend of mine calls it "sucking the fourth-quarter oranges." Those who didn't play basketball or football in high school might not get the reference.
traditionalguy: You just describe the plots to many country house murder mysteries.
EAB & Robin Goodfellow: I get it. Some actors I recognize easily (Michael Caine, for example) but there are others that would show up in a lot of movies, like war movies shot in the 1960s and 1970s, that were always there and you had to think "Who is this - oh, it's Donald Pleasance again."
“Blogger EAB said...
"My biggest and most noticeable memory issue is with names. Especially actors.”
Friend comes over frequently and we discuss sports, movies and such. An actor comes up and neither of us can remember his name.
Some time after he leaves, while I'm thinking about something else, the name just pops into my head.
I'll text it to him ... "Charles Grodin!" ... for example.
So far we're able to laugh about it.
Also, I get a strong Peggy Noonan vibe from Lamott's writing style.
Ambition falls away? Horrors! At 81,I have more interests and projects percolating than ever.
I can still leap tall buildings in a single bound though I now require a running start. Willy Nelson (91) has warned that if we insist on having more birthdays, we'll eventually outlive our dicks. He sounded like he was serious...
On the mental side, I think it's a "Use it or lose it" situation. I seem to recall being told humans only use like 25 percent of their brains. If we live long enough, shouldn't we figure out how to deploy reinforcements?
Twice in the last six years I/ve been written-off by friends, family and doctors. One night, in some kind of critical care unit, I was visited by the concept that mortality could be personal. I thought about it for about 10 minutes before accepting it and deciding that if my next breath was my last, it was gonna be a really great breath :-)
I don't sleep much. Started the last time I returned from Vietnam (71). Now, I turn-in about 4 a.m. and rise between 7 and 8. I might nod-off for half-an-hour after dinner, some nights.
Hosting about 10 hikers of mixed ability and experience at the wonderful Stella Alpina Penthouse in Wengen, the end of September. Got new boots!
Do the things you care about. Do as much as you can. If you try, you can probably do a little more.
Every night say "thanks" for the day and all the people I shared it with. Every morning, I awake thinking, "YEA! I get one more chance to get something right."
If we found out we don’t really die when we die, maybe we would chill out and live lives of quiet inspiration.
"Knock, Knock, Knockin on Heaven's Door."
At 70, you dont expect anyone to answer, but you can hear St. Peter's footsteps. So you get less amibitious. Plus, ambition sometimes requires you to work past 8 PM, and old people just aren't up to that.
After I retired at age 60 I soon got bored so took a truly easy job of dealing blackjack at an Indian Casino. Actual work hours for 8 hour shift were less than 6 and gross income $45K+ a year.
Anyway, physical problems prompted leaving at age 70, cognitive was just fine. In the ensuing 12 years I can recognize lessening of mental abilities. The biggest marker is reading, 10 years ago split 50/50 fiction/non-fiction. Today it's likely 80/20.
“Boomers making realizations others make at age 21.”
Succeeding generations unable to find their asses with two hands and a detailed map.
@Iman, you can tell them to bend at the waist and reach straight back, and they'll still miss it 3 times out of 5. Worse than that if they're Gen-X.
Speak for yourself.
I am able to remember things of personal importance (for whatever reason) that happened a half century ago in great detail (e.g., a March 10, 1973 Bowie concert at the Long Beach Arena… got a ticket for making a U-turn before the show, seeing people completely covered in gold paint walking around the venue… the fat, shirtless guy rolling joints as he sat in his seat before the show… what my then girlfriend, now wife and I talked about… really mundane stuff.
But I forget names and usually can’t tell you what I had for lunch yesterday. But the answers to those usually magically appear at some point afterward.
When it comes to boomers, I've noticed that in probably half the cases where I've checked the age of the person referred to, that they weren't a boomer (a couple of notable non-boomers: Clint Eastwood and Ruth Bader Ginsburg). At this point, the term seems to be used mostly to bitch about older people.
One of the problems I can see with getting old is that you no longer have meaningful problems to solve, so it’s no fun to solve them. If you have clients who need to have things done and are willing to pay that makes it better for me.
When I was young I was probably better at “sat” type things, I could write proofs and solve large integrals without even consciously thinking about what i was doing or needing to explain it to anyone, getting the right answer was enough. In a long career the issue was more figuring out what the real problem was, that is harder than solving it, and that is what is called “wisdom”. Of course there are many things I am unable to do, but I guess I don’t know what they are.
Good things for me are doing data kagle contests, expanding my German vocabulary, and learning different instruments, I just got an f5 mandolin and love it.
I like Joseph Campbell’s idea about getting old, you are driving down a bumpy road in an old car and the fender falls off, then the door goes, then a wheel, and someday you find yourself flying down the road with no car at all and you don’t notice.
One thing I noticed is:
Trash America - No response
Trash christianity - No response.
Trash the Boomers - Big Response.
Why Boomers are the greatest. And why are complaining about old people (this from boomers!). And don't complain about their music or their selfishness.
Thinking of a board game for Boomers. Call it, "You Know...You Know" You pick a card that describes a movie from between 1950 to 1990, say. You read the card and set the timer. The first person in the game to guess the title correctly goes to the bonus round in which the player names the actor, director, year of release, etc. I haven't quite figure it all out yet. But it'll be a big hit, as big as that game of the eighties; you know, the one with all the cards that asked all kinds of mundane questions?
Ambition can be ok.. but to much and it becomes greed.
Soros is still full of greed... as is Biden.. and they are well past 70.. And look at Schumer and Pelosi! Greed is ageless and one of the Seven Deadly Sins..
Blogger Temujin said... And I know that I often write things on the Althouse blog that are very personal and may be off-topic, or simply don't belong here.
How about that? First thing I do when reading comments is to do a search for Temujin. Any time you leave feedback, I’m grateful for the common sense and insight you post.
‘Speaking about aging, I assured him (and myself) that I still had all my marbles.
He responded, "Well, you never had that many to begin with." ‘
You put that hanging curve right in his wheelhouse, effinayright !
Willy Nelson (91) has warned that if we insist on having more birthdays, we'll eventually outlive our dicks. He sounded like he was serious.
Holy Carp!!!
"Let me take back what I was just going to say."
In grad school one of our profs used to say "Everything's a truism if you think fast enough."
Age 70 seems too young to be referencing "St. Bernards with kegs of brandy."
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