I’m 65– and I’m Old!

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now…….
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m 64.

“When I’m 64” — The Beatles

I know I’m getting older, losing my hair.  Hardly anyone needs me, and no one feeds me, and I’m way past 64. I hit 65 a few days ago. 

When the Beatles recorded “When I’m 64” in 1966 (although Paul actually penned it in 1958), 64 was OLD. At 64, the markers of old age are present: wrinkled skin, white hair, weaker body, and grown grandchildren if you had any.

Today I happily consider myself old.  I am quite aware that my active years are lessening, and death is not far away.  Sure, there are people who try to be nice by saying, “You’re still quite young!”  Yeah, right!  Life circumstances and social norms not too long ago said that, by 65, one’s mortality is an ever-present specter.  And so one needs to think about how to live out well what years one has left.

As such, I finished all the legal paperwork for when I’m gone.  I am now culling my household of things so that others have very little to get rid of when I’m dead.  I am old, and I am needing to think that way.

Sadly, though, this society is starting to think less honorably about the senior years, and pushing back the age when one is considered “old.”  You see it in many places.  One example: this year Amtrak pushed back its senior rate for travel from age 62 to 65. Other places are pushing up the age limit as well.  Remember when the age where one can claim Social Security benefits was 65? Now it’s 66; and for the generation behind me, it’ll be 67. There’s even talk of pushing it back even further for later generations.   Recently, AARP magazine showed a headline: “70 is the new 65.”  At first, I thought this was about how many older people should have a young-life attitude.  But it was an article on needing to delay the retirement mindset until 70.  As the top 1% get more and more money (and so don’t need any retirement funds), the pot for retirement (pensions, Social Security) is drying up.  So the ability to slow down and reflect on one’s journey in life, rightfully deserved, is taken away from old people.

I refuse to let people tell me that I’m not old yet.  I am.  And I want to take full advantage of it.  I’m ready to start living out what it means to be an old person: someone who can rest from the toils performed in life.

The Japanese have a way of clarifying one’s role in life by dividing it into three phases:  1) Young: you learn how to contribute to the world (education years), 2) Adult: you act to contribute to that world (professional years), and 3) Elder: you pass back gleaned wisdom on how to contribute to that world (senior years).

Although modern society hardly gives any recognition of that final phase (there is no respect for elders), my mindset is to stand honorably as an old person, basking in what life has shaped me to be.  I want to rest from societally required labor and have those following behind me in age do the work. And I am happy with the person (namely, me) that has gotten this far.  He is old, moving toward death,  But that weather-beaten soul now has the status of respected elder, a state given by life.  Hopefully others will pay me that respect.  If not, that will only be to their detriment (not mine), to repeat the failures of history, rather than learn from it.  I am old– and I’m proud to be at this age.