1. Why are so many of our leaders so old? Our President shuffles along with an unsteady gate, mouth agape and slow witted at the microphone. Yesterday, the Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell froze during a press conference for the second time in two months, staring eerily into space, silent as the grave for several minutes while his aides came along side to whisper in his ear. A US Senator from California clings to power despite deterioration of her mental and physical health. Although the United States is by far the youngest major power in the world as a nation, our leaders look like escapees from a Nursing Home.
2. The Front Runner for the Republican Party Presidential nomination and a former President of the United States has 97 pending felony charges against him, and is himself 77 years old. The previous sentence is one that I never thought I would write at any point during my life.
3. There is a professional baseball player out there who turned down a contract offer that would have paid him 400 million dollars over the next ten years, every dime of it guaranteed. Who does that? Juan Soto better hope he doesn’t slip on the stairs at his house and blow out his knee.
4. Aging has not at all been what I expected it to be. When I was a much younger man I would look at people in their 60’s and think, “Why are old people so grumpy, mean and set in their ways?” But over the last couple of years the aging process has manifested itself differently for me. The physical part sucks. When stuff starts breaking down, its no fun. Your body tries to warn you but you don’t listen. The other day the kid next door wanted to play some one on one. I took him on and although I managed to win, when it was over the kid went on about his day like nothing had happened. Me, on the other hand, spent twenty minutes in the jacuzzi to regain feeling in my extremities! But the physical is one thing, what has happened to my thinking and attitudes is what has been a whole other story. Instead of getting more set in my ways, I have begun to question my ways more than I ever have. I’m always thinking, “Why do I do this? Why do I think this way? Why have I always done things this way?” Its not that I am rejecting my earlier ideas or habits necessarily, but I am inspecting them more closely. Its difficult to explain. Some old habits and preferences haven’t changed at all, but others have. There are publications I used to read without much scrutiny or criticism which now I find myself questioning…wait a minute, that’s not true! At one time in my life I could be very unyielding about certain things. Now I find myself much more willing to listen. I’m growing much more contrarian with age. I’m much more suspicious of conventional wisdom. Groupthink still repulses me but as I get older I am much more likely to notice that groupthink in my own views. And there’s another thing…
The other day I was meeting with a client and was telling her a story about something her deceased husband had done for me many years ago. Right in the middle of the telling I suddenly choked up—in front of a client!!!—to the point where I had to pause the story to gather myself. Its not even the first time this has happened recently. This NEVER would have happened when I was 40. I have never been overly sentimental…until I turned 60 or so. Now, sentimentality rears its strange head at the oddest times and for the oddest reasons.
Don’t misunderstand. I still have my “get off my lawn” moments. I’m still stubborn about certain things. But there has also been a slow transformation in the way I think. Its as if the more I know, the less I think I know. Maybe thats not the best way to say it. Perhaps its closer to this—the more I know, the more I realize I don’t now.
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