Upon reaching 60
That's how old I am today.
Americans like to debate at what age you are "old", with that benchmark, and the one for middle age, moving over the years to some extent. Some go so far as to claim that the term doesn't mean anything.
It does, as you really do become older and then old, at some point.
The United Nations categorizes "older" as commencing at age 60, something, given their mission, that would encompass the totality of the human race. Some polling you'll see suggests that Americans regard it actually starting at 59 or 57. Pew, the respected polling and data institution, noted the following:
These generation gaps in perception also extend to the most basic question of all about old age: When does it begin? Survey respondents ages 18 to 29 believe that the average person becomes old at age 60. Middle-aged respondents put the threshold closer to 70, and respondents ages 65 and above say that the average person does not become old until turning 74.
Interesting.
It is not like flipping a switch, and it doesn't really happen to all people at the exact same time. I'm often reminded of this when I observe people I've known for many years. Men in particular, I used to think, aged at a much different rate than women. I knew a few of my contemporaries who were getting pretty old by the time they were in their 30s, and I know a few men in their 70s who are in fantastic shape and appear much younger than they really are. I recall thinking, back when I was in my late 20s, that my father was getting older, but wasn't old, right up until the time he died at age 62.
Having said that, I’m often now shocked, I hate to admit, by the appearance of women my own age, again that I knew when they were young. It's not like I know every girl I went to high school with, but I know a few of them, and some of them have held up much better than others. In that category, some of my close relatives have really held up well.
Up until recently, I could say that I've held up well, but this past year has been really rough health wise. First there was colon surgery in October, followed by a prolonged medical addressing of a thyroid nodule which was feared, at first, to be aggressive cancer. Working that out is still ongoing, but that now appears much less likely, meaning that only half the thyroid will need to be removed.
All of that has reminded me of Jesus' address to Peter:
Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.
John, Chapter 21.
Peter, by the way, was between age 64 and 68 when he was martyred. St. Paul was over 60, it's worth noting, when he met the same fate.
It's been rough in other ways as well. One thing is that, in spite of what people like to claim, your fate is really fixed by age 60. You aren't going to leave your job as an accountant and become an Army paratrooper.1 If you are a paratrooper, you're going to retire now, as 60 is the military's retirement cutoff age. If you've spent decades in the Army, and retire at 60 (most servicemen retire before that), you aren't going on, probably, to a career you don't have any strong connection with.
In my case, as I started to type out here the other day and then did not, as it didn't read the way I really wanted it to, I can now look back on a long career, over 30 years, and largely regard it as a failure, even though almost everyone I know would regard it as a success. I won't get over that. I'd always hoped to make the judiciary, but I'm not going to, and there's no longer even any point in trying. I'm reminded of this failure every time I appear in front of one of the new judges and see how incredibly young they now are, and also when I listen to suggestions that the retirement age for judges be raised up to the absurdly high 75.
At age 60, if I were to go to work for the state (which I'm also not going to), I couldn't really ever make the "Rule of 85" for retirement. As a lifelong private practice attorney, I'm now actually at the age where most lawyers look at their career, and their income, and decide they can't retire, some retreating into their office personality as the last version of themselves and nothing else. I'm not going to become a member of the legislature, something probably most young lawyers toy with the idea of. I'm not going to become a game warden, something I pondered when young.2 I'm way past the point where most similar Federal occupations are age restricted, and for good reason.
This is, work wise, pretty much it.
I said to myself, this is the business we've chosen; I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!
Hyman Roth, to Michael Corleone, in The Godfather, Part II ,
I'm also never going to own my own ranch, which was a decades long career goal. I have acquired a fair number of cattle, but my operation is always going to be ancillary to my in laws at this point. When I was first married my wife and I tried to find our own place, with she being much less optimistic about it than I. There were times, when the land cost less, that we could almost make, almost, a small place. We never quite did, and now, we're not going to.
Indeed, thinking back to St. Peter, I'm now at the age of "you can't", with some of the "can'ts" being medical. I could when I was younger, but now I can't, or shouldn't. Others are familial. "You can't" is something I hear a lot, pertaining to a lot of things, ranging from what we might broadly call home economics, in the true economic sense, to short term and long term plans, to even acquisitions that to most people wouldn't be much, but in my circumstances, in the views of others, are. Some are professional, as ironically it's really at some point in your 50s or very early 60s where you are by default fully professionally engaged, with that taking precedence over everything else, including time for anything else.
One of the most frustrating things about reaching this age, however, is seeing that you probably will never see how some things turn out, and you don't seem to have the ability to influence them. I'm not, in this instance, referring to something like the Hyman Roth character again, in which he hopes to see the results of his criminal enterprise flourish but fears he won't live long enough to. Indeed, I find myself curiously detached from concerns of this type that some people have. I've noticed, for instance, the deep concern some aging lawyers have about their "legacy" in the law, which often translates to being remembered as a lawyer or their firm's carrying on. I don't have those concerns, and indeed, taking the long view of things, I think it's really vanity to suppose that either of those wishes might be realized by anyone.
No, what I mean is that by this age there are those you know very closely, and you have reason to fear for their own long term fate, but you really don't have much you can do about it. People who seem to be stuck in place, for instance, seem beyond the helping hand, and more than that, they don't really want, it seems, to be offered a hand. People who have walked up to the church door but who won't go in as it means giving up grudges, burdens or hatreds, can't be coaxed in, even it means their soul is imperiled. It recalls the last final lines of A River Runs Through It. .
I remember the last sermon I ever heard my father give, not long before his own death:
Each one of us here today will, at one time in our lives, look upon a loved one in need and ask the same question: We are willing Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true that we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give, or more often than not, that part we have to give… is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us… But we can still love them… We can love—completely—even without complete understanding….
I guess that's about right.
Footnotes:
1. Or, I might note, a Ukrainian Legionnaire. You are too old to join.
Interestingly, I recently saw an article by a well known, I guess, newspaper reporter who attempted to join the U.S. Army in his upper 40s. He apparently didn't know that you are well past the eligible age of enlistment at that point. He was arguing that there should be some sort of special unit made for people like himself, or like he imagined himself, well-educated individuals in their upper 40s. Why should there be if you can recruit people in their 20s?
2. Wyoming Game Wardens were once required to retire at age 55, but a lawsuit some decades ago overturned that. It, in turn, was later overruled, but by that time the state had changed the system. Since that time, it's set it again statutorily, with the age now being 65 by law. There aren't, therefore, any 67-year-old game wardens.
Statutorily, the current law provides:
9-3-607. Age of retirement.
(a) Any employee with six (6) or more years of service to his credit is eligible to receive a retirement allowance under this article when he attains age fifty (50).
(b) Effective July 1, 1998, any employee retiring after July 1, 1998, with twenty-five (25) or more years of service may elect to retire and receive a benefit upon attaining age fifty (50) as described in W.S. 9-3-610.
(c) Repealed by Laws 1993, ch. 120, §§ 1, 2.
(d) Any employee in service who has attained age sixty-five (65), shall be retired not later than the last day of the calendar month in which his 65th birthday occurs.
Age limitations of this type are tied to physical fitness. But what about mental fitness? As mentioned here before, Gen. Marshall forcibly retired most serving U.S. Army generals, or at least sidelined them, who were over 50 years of age during World War Two, and that had to do with their thinking. We now allow judges to remain on the bench until they are 70. Would 60 make more sense? And can the same argument be made for lawyers, who are officers of the court?
A thoughtful post on that milestone (one I hit last August). Thanks for sharing it. I also appreciated the lines from A River Runs Through It. That is a book that holds up, even with an annual rereading.
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