On Turning Sixty

I turned sixty a few days ago (same September 29 birthday as Admiral Horatio Nelson) and found myself neither as wise nor as wizened as I would have predicted when I was thirty.

To my surprise, the Big 6-0 is no big deal. Sure, physically I’ve slowed, though I actually have felt better the past few months than in years due to improvement in my rheumatoid arthritis and the drugs for it. Mentally, my consciousness feels little different than it did when I was in my 20s; once you hit adulthood your sense of self doesn’t change much.

Age is a state of mind. Sixty is the new fifty, partly because we live longer and partly because Social Security and Medicare are receding like rainbows as a result. When I quit teaching in June people congratulated me on my “retirement,” and I thought, ‘Are you kidding? I hope/fear to be in harness at my keyboard at 80, still trying to peck out a living.’

I regard myself as a fortunate hard worker, a blue-collar kid with modest expectations blessed with a surprisingly interesting life – with the best and worst developments in it often disturbingly contingent on good and bad luck. I think it was Lennon who said life is what happens when you’re making other plans.

I’m not one for birthday bashes, but this one was unusual because I spent the day before in meetings with book editors in Manhattan. Didn’t expect that when I was thirty, either. Books were what other, mysterious, people wrote.

I also didn’t expect book editors to be nice. In New York. Really.

The birthday itself was spent partly on an airplane flying back to Seattle, our takeoff delayed by lightning. (Nice of God to recognize my significance with a thunderstorm.) One sign of wisdom was an upgrade to business class, and another was the deliberate choice of some memorable celebratory events.

Birthday eve I saw a New York play in which atheist Sigmund Freud faced off with believer C.S. Lewis, which tickled my sense of mortality. The longer you live, the shorter life seems.

Birthday morning was a visit to the opulent art museum in the New York mansion of steel and coke magnate Henry Clay Frick. The sumptuous home was finished in the autumn on 1914, just as soldiers were settling into the trenches of World War I, and you could argue civilization has gone downhill ever since. The confident taste seems an age away from a Donald Trump.

And yet post-birthday was a visit to the Kurt Cobain and Nirvana exhibit at Seattle’s Experience Music Project, and you realize how art takes many forms and has been democratized since Frick’s day, when a timber town kid could become a rock star or a painting contractor’s son (me) could write books.

What seems important after the first six decades?

Family and friends, first. Great wife, great kids. And remember guys, “Happy wife, happy life.” Good relationships are hard work.

Got a lot of cool birthday greetings through Facebook. Another thing I didn’t expect at thirty.

Second, a sense of contribution, that you’re part of the solution instead of part of the problem. I guesstimate I’ve churned out maybe 4 million published words to date, and hope at least some have educated, entertained, or incited. I’ve realized, however, that problems aren’t solved, they’re worked on. As a society we take two steps forward, one step back, pause for breath, and pick the same fight all over again.

Third, experiences. Work as a journalist and author has given the opportunity to meet an astonishing number of interesting people in fascinating places. If only I could figure out what it means. Suggested epitaph: “What was that all about?”

Bringing up the rear is stuff. I like nice stuff as much as anybody, but it tends to break or go obsolete or get boring in ways people don’t. At this point in life, the stuff I really want to acquire is a sense of security (kind of a lost cause in 2011) and time, meaning the freedom to do what you want to do when you want to do it. That’s more about choice than piling up toys.

I think people are better, and the future brighter, than you’d guess from media coverage. We’ve made a lot of progress in my lifetime in civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and a sense of stewardship toward the planet. I also think we have a long ways to go. Take that greed thing…

So I’m afraid I’m going to need another six decades to fully straighten everything out.

Hope the guy who sent the lightning is listening.