I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Saturday Reflections, I take time out to reflect.
Note: Going forward I am going to use the pseudonym Ray for the man I am seeing as opposed to using his initial M in my blogging. He is a ray of light in my life and also it seems like a fitting name for someone of his age and background.
I’ve been seeing someone 12 years older than I am—Ray is 69 years old and I am 57. This has been cause of much concern on my part, and not much on his.
When I asked him what he thought of the age gap, he said, “I still feel like I’m 18. And anyway, I don’t want to date grandma.”
He didn’t ask me if I wanted to date grandpa.
Fortunately, he doesn’t act at all old even if he has all the wrinkles and age spots you’d expect for someone pushing 70.1
I really enjoyed The Ruffian Ian Leslie’s 27 Notes on Growing Old(er), an apropos article for me to come across this morning as I keep thinking of being old and growing older so much lately.
These two notes, in particular, made me think of how Ray acts about aging:
21. There’s an interview with Mick Jagger from when he was 58, in which he’s way more patient than he might have been, while a Dutch interviewer suggests he’s too old to be a rock singer. Jagger is 81 now and still selling out stadiums. Jagger, McCartney and others from their generation have endured decades of being sneered at for not “acting their age”. Few people do that anymore. By stubbornly persisting, they’ve changed our ideas of what that phrase means.
22. Jagger and McCartney hardly ever engage in age-based self-deprecation. They tend not to make those slightly nervous “I’m just an old geezer” jokes, of the kind that the rest of us start making from the moment we pass 30. I think that might have something to do with the almost ridiculously good time they’re having in their eighties. They play the double game to perfection: simultaneously aware of age and oblivious to it.
That, I think, is the way to approach aging: be simultaneously aware of it and oblivious to it. Don’t be one of those people who’s trying to avoid it or who constantly talks about it. Just accept it and enjoy your life to the fullest.
That’s how Ray is.
An example: When I met him, I noticed pretty early on he wasn’t hearing me very well. He’d miss things I said and ask me to repeat them. I was used to this from living with my eighty-two year old mother. I suggested he might want to consider hearing aids.
This didn’t bother him in the least. We got advice from my mom, who had experience getting her hearing tested and using hearing aids. He joined Costco and set up an appointment. I know many people resist or bemoan supports like hearing aids or walkers that make them feel they’re getting old. But Ray just took it in stride.
Meanwhile, he does things that men younger than he can’t or won’t, because they are too old or feeble or boring. More than one man I dated in the past had already quit skiing—bad knees! worried about injury!—all of them younger than Ray. One main reason Ray and I connected was because of his ongoing commitment to skiing, something that’s very important to me in a partner.2
Item 8 in 27 Notes on Growing Old(er), maybe it’s better to save the better and best for later in your life:
There’s a kernel of truth, by the way, in that Rat Pack-era Frank Sinatra line about how he pities tee-totallers because when they wake up in the morning, they know that’s the best they’re going to feel all day. In terms of pacing your life, it might be a good idea not to optimise too early. If you’re in your twenties, perhaps you shouldn’t exercise too much or eat too healthily, since if you’re hyper-fit at 30, all you’ll experience is decline, pure decline. Whereas if you only start getting healthy later on you can, at least for a while, experience the feeling of water running uphill.
This is an interesting point to ponder but applied to relationships.
Ray said to me one night, “what if my last love is my best love?”
I feel the same possibility with him.
Here I was thinking that at 57 I wouldn’t love anymore, at least romantically. I have had many great love affairs through my life. I was fortunate in that respect, because those loves brought me so much joy and meaning and intensity.3 Last year, I was ready to write off ever feeling that again.
Maybe, though, all those loves were just prelude to this one.
I wrote about something like that in my Greensborough Drive newsletter. From The future already exists: Creativity, love and the physics of destiny:
Could love at first sight be a glimpse of your future? Maybe it’s just chemistry—someone wildly attractive crossing your path. But it’s more interesting to imagine that in the moment of falling, you’re feeling your future with this person. A flash of destiny.
I’ve just started seeing someone new, and I feel that pull, that sense of inevitability. He reminds me of someone I used to love, who himself reminded me of someone even further in my past.
But what if it’s not that the new man in my life echoes past lovers. What if they were both echoes of him?
Ray, I’m so glad I met you. ♥️
- He’s quite good-natured so I don’t think he’ll mind my saying that. Anyway, the deep groove he has between his eyebrows is one of my favorite things about him. ↩︎
- I suppose we’re both just lucky that our bodies haven’t deteriorated to the point we can’t ski anymore. We can’t take entire responsibility for that, although staying in shape through activity helps. ↩︎
- Plus they are fodder for my art and writing. ↩︎