Some Appreciate Aging: The Boss Mourns the Glory Days

Growing old is difficult

Time is against us. It is like emigrating to a whole new world. One can mourn the old world and the glory days of the old self, as the Boss (Bruce Springsteen) and I do, but Wordsworth cautions us:

The wiser mind

Mourns less for what age takes away

Than what it leaves behind.

One is advised to learn a new skill set to navigate this brave new world and to re-invent oneself accordingly. We have changed identities before: from student to worker to spouse to parent, and now once more. And that new world is changing so fast (the TV, GPS, ChatGPT, Siri, and other AI) and is so bewildering, and not only to the top 20. I asked my daughter-in-law to fix the GPS, but she couldn’t, so she gave it to her 14-year-old son, who fixed it immediately. We do not need to run to keep up—we need to sprint.

Many people have written about aging, notably Erik Erikson with Childhood and Society, George Vaillant, Daniel Levinson, Gail Sheehy, Curtis Pesmen's How a Man Ages, and textbooks on the sociology of aging, but none have yet been titled The Joy of Aging. Some joys there may be: retirement, pensions, 10 percent discounts at my pharmacy, and free bus transportation. But Wordsworth again, in The Prelude, Book 2, was happy:

Many are our joys

In youth, but oh! What happiness to live

When every hour brings palpable access

Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight,

And sorrow is not there!

And in his ode To a Skylark:

I o’er the earth will go plodding on

By myself, cheerfully, till the day is done.

Simone de Beauvoir was not so cheerful and offered an existentialist description: “The level of inimicality in things rises: stairs are harder to climb, distances longer to travel, streets are more dangerous to cross, parcels heavier to carry” (1977:339). Too true.

The social circle shrinks dramatically after retirement. We have to learn to adapt to this. Apart from family, the people I usually meet now are smiling medical practitioners—wonderful people, givers not takers—but the meet is temporary, sporadic, and professional. And one has to get smart: There are so many things one cannot, or should not, do. “Dad, you’re not 18 anymore. I’ll do it.”

Most people fear aging, just as we deny death. To comfort us, the old are re-defined as Senior Citizens or Golden Agers or even Zoomers. That may help until we are labeled "Handicapped."

De Beauvoir reviewed various responses to aging over the years. Most were negative, but Paul Claudel, a French poet, was defiantly positive with a Shakespearean perspective: “Eighty years old! No eyes left, no ears, no teeth, no legs, no wind! And when all is said and done, how astonishingly well one does without them!”

Voltaire wrote in similar terms: “It is true that I am rather deaf, rather blind and rather crippled; and that is all capped by three or four atrocious infirmities: but nothing deprives me of hope” (de Beauvoir, 1977:337). The attitude to aging is what determines one’s joy in life. Full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes!

We have learned so much in our long lives, often in the school of hard knocks and by our mistakes, but guys tend not to ask for advice (still less for directions or help—hence, of course, some mistakes). My sons don’t ask for or need my advice, and I only remember asking my dad for advice once, and I only remember him giving me advice once when I left to join the Navy: “Don’t play bridge, and don’t lend your charts.”

We have probably accumulated some wisdom over the years, but who wants to hear it? (I wondered about the answer to my question, so I wrote down some of them and quite impressed myself. Now I wonder how old I was when I learned them.)

We can give advice, but it is best to do so obliquely. In Zimbabwe, I was running and jumping over small shrubs. The kids did not tell me not to. One just remarked, “There is a snake in that bush.” This point was taken without loss of pride. One does not tell someone else what to do or not to do. But one can make an observation or tell a story, leaving the listener to try to figure out the message.

How we are aging

The latest news is that Americans aged 65+ enjoy better emotional well-being than the average adult, according to a Pew Research poll. About 16 percent of Americans “feel lonely or isolated all or most of the time,” but only 6 percent of those over 65 and 24 percent of those aged 18-29 do. Conversely, while 58 percent of Americans, on average, feel optimistic about their lives, 68 percent of those over 65 do (Goddard and Parker, 2025).

Aging Essential Reads

Longevity and Meaning

How Our Voices Change With Time

On a different note, The Economist (4 January 2025) reported that Brits, Americans, and others aged 55-75 are “Aging disgracefully”: “alcohol and drug use—and abuse—have surged,” as well as sexually transmitted diseases and criminality. Meanwhile, the young are behaving better in terms of alcohol and sex. Two different portraits. But could this disgraceful behavior relate to their superior well-being? Further research is necessary.

The longevity industry is doing well. Last year, nearly 6,000 studies were published, “almost five times as many as two decades ago.” The Methuselah Foundation hopes to “make 90 the new 50.” The search for immortality is as old as civilization, going back to Gilgamesh about four millennia ago (Kloc, 2025).

To conclude, if one wants to look younger or better, cosmetic surgery is always available, with a low risk of death; if one wants to live longer, lifestyle choices are available. Growing old is certainly easy—just do nothing—but it is also difficult, with possible physical and/or cognitive declines, cumulative adversities to cope with, and more joys to enjoy, like life and time.