I’ve got a Green Card to the Country of the Old

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Welcome to my world.

Let’s call it the country of the old, from William Butler Yeats’s Sailing to Byzantium.

It could also be your world. If not today, someday.

I’ve got a Green Card.

Another poet, William Stafford, wrote

A passport costs everything there is.

Some days, I feel old, and some days I don’t

Every few years, I bend over the wrong way, pull the Iliopsoas muscles in my lower back right side, and feel like the old and falling apart tree pictured above.

I asked my friend Alan, 78, who is dealing with a more serious back problem, how this condition influences the way he thinks about himself.

Who am I? Am I the 78-year-old who enjoys playing golf, leading workshops, going to rotary and the film festival, or am I a person whose back pain affects my range of activities and limits my world? I now have two senses of identity; whichever one is dominant is driven by a level of pain.

Alan’s right; pain matters to identity.

So does age. Alan has had a handicap since childhood. Decades of his putting weight on one leg have now resulted in pressure on a sciatic nerve.

I first pulled my SOAS muscles stepping out of a car 40 years ago, at 34. The pain forced me to my knees. Three days later, I was fully recovered.

Now, at 74, the recovery time is two weeks, during which my identity, like Alan’s, focuses on my physical limitations, the limitations of an aged person.

Somedays, I feel old, and some days, I don’t.

This experience and Alan’s thoughtful answer have made me think about how important age is to my identity.

So, I asked other friends.

Here are some excerpts.

Age is everything to my identity. That may be because I am 78, and age and identity seem symbiotic, reflecting the other in everyday life. (Dale, 78)

Being older is not important to my identity at all. I am still working as a university professor. Mentoring students keeps me mentally and psychologically young. (Jim, 67)

Now, on the edge of 80, I live in awe of my age each day, even though many of my 80-year-old friends take their age in stride. (Ruth, 79)

Age is quite important to my identity [because] I have too many regrets and wasted years, [so] having 10–20 years available doesn’t seem the same as it did 20 years ago. (Wade, 67)

Much of my identity at this age is satisfaction in reflecting on all the different things I’ve undertaken and as an explorer of what life has to offer. (Peter, 82)

I’ve gotten to the top of the hill and got perspective. (Rebecca, 72)

Isn’t it a gift to have thoughtful friends?

Like Alan’s reply, my friends’ answers helped me develop two more ideas regarding age and identity.

They may also trigger your thoughts and stories.

Please share them in the comment section.

Chronological and Psychological Age

Jim is a university professor who plans to work for another five years. He introduced me to the distinction between chronological and psychological age.

He writes:

I mentor quite a few students, which helps keep me mentally and psychologically young. Psychologically speaking, I don’t think of myself as 67, probably in my late 40s or early 50s.

And elaborated:

The concept of psychological age is real — Pam [Jim’s wife] and I are chronologically the same age as many of the people with whom we are interacting, but in terms of our behavior and psychological age, we are much younger.

I retired in 2018 at 69 from 40 years of college teaching. At my college’s Christmas party that winter, I looked around at the crowd and, without thinking about it, gravitated toward my younger, still teaching colleagues. That’s who I identified with. I wanted nothing to do with the country of the old — not even their company.

For about a year, I did not enroll or teach in my college’s Life Long Learning program, join retired friends for Thursday breakfast, or attend the monthly emeriti lecture series.

And then, one day, while shaving, I noticed I had kept my sleep t-shirt on while lathering up. I had covered my aging torso.

I was turning away from what?

A part of who I had become. Turning away rarely works.

At that moment, I pivoted toward the country of the old.

That’s me below, in the red hat, a few months ago at a lecture by a retired colleague.

I’m also a student and teacher in Life Long Learning seminars, a regular at the Thursday morning retirees coffee klatch, and at this year’s Christmas party, looked over at my younger colleagues and felt sorry for them.

I like to visit their country occasionally.

But there’s no dual citizenship.

Experience and Wisdom

Why did I feel sorry for my younger colleagues?

My friend Dale, 78, describes one reason.

When I turned 65, my age allowed me to control my life completely.

For Dale, a ceramist, that meant new hobbies, including hiking and fishing.

In the country of the old, trails, streams, and libraries are always crowded.

My friends still in the country of the young have to go to work in the morning.

But there’s something else at play. It’s why I also lament my younger self. My friend Wade wrote about how regret looms large in later life.

Across the breakfast table, my partner, Rebecca, answered the question in the title of this story with the top-of-the-hill quote. I asked her to say more.

My life experiences have solidified my position on many things. I know more things, including that having the wrong position is okay.

Rebecca speaks for many of us.

Not all older people are wise. But many, including me, are more perceptive than we were.

Age builds a free lending library of experience.

Peter weighed in.

I have spent a lot of time in 80+ years exploring what I think the nature of reality is and have sought philosophy and science in that pursuit and with am with the conclusions I have drawn that give me satisfaction if not ultimate truth.

So, being an elder feels good.

“He Was Complete”

Roughly corresponding to my turn toward the country of the old five years ago, I started to read biographies of my sports heroes: Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Muhammad Ali, Sandy Koufax, Bill Russell, Buck O’Neil, and Roberto Clemente.

I didn’t think much about why I was doing this until a friend loaned me a book of essays by Roger Angell, Once More Around the Park. Angell died at 99 two years ago and was considered the finest baseball chronicler. In the preface to Around the Park, he’s contemplating the retirement of relief pitcher Dan Quisenberry with these words:

He had closed the book, and in that moment had become fresh and young again, and…wonderfully clear in my mind. He was complete.

I no longer cared about my hero’s athletic accomplishments. I was more interested in the kind of people they had become.

When I get my Country of the Old passport, it will be stamped complete.

By that time, I will have seen it all.

And made sense of my life.

William Butler Yeats’s poem Sailing to Byzantium can be found here.

William Stafford’s poem Waiting in Line can be found here.