I did my first track workout in over a year last night. I’m flabbergasted by how much speed I’ve lost in recent years… Still, I’m feeling quite fit these days, and if I can’t get my legs to turn over as fast as they did in the second Clinton Administration, then I can live with that.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about aging. I’m 38, and it’s really only in the past year that I’ve started to encounter real evidence of physical decline. My muscles don’t recover quite as fast from a long run as they used to; my speed is not what it was. As I found out this summer, if I really want to get back down to the weight I was five or six years ago, I can’t just go back to eating the way I did. As they say in Twelve Step programs, "the road gets narrower"; when it comes to my aging metabolism, my body’s ability to burn off fat and sugar has noticeably declined.
We’ve also finished hiring a new "crop" of full-time faculty at Pasadena City College. Up until recently, I was still the youngest full-time instructor in my division. For a decade, I was the "baby" of the department. To be frank, I liked that status. I got to play the role of the young hothead in more than one faculty meeting, and I assure you that that was a deeply satisfying part to play. As I wrote a few months ago, the average age of new hires has been rising dramatically in recent years. Though I was given a tenure-track job at 27, and many of my older colleagues were hired at similar ages, fewer and fewer twenty-somethings are getting full-time posts.
I’m still the "last" prof hired tenure-track in the division while still in his twenties. But we have selected a couple of folks in their early thirties this year, and so at long last, after eleven years, my status as the "baby" has ended. On the one hand, I’m delighted to see new "young Turks" join the division; on the other, I’m aware that it means that I am indeed not as young as I used to be.
But this is not a musing filled with regret over a vanishing youth. Rather, I’m happy to say that it’s just in the past year that I’ve begun to embrace the very tangible blessings of getting a bit older. While the gray is sprouting in my beard and on my chest, I’ve also found my patience growing. Ask my friends from a decade or so ago; I was as prone to road rage as any Angeleno. Monday afternoon, I failed to signal while changing lanes on the 210; a young man behind me "flipped me off" as a consequence. In my twenties, rage and indignation would have boiled up instantly, and I would have returned the gesture. Instead, this time I raised my hand, opened my palm, and mouthed "sorry". The old anger just didn’t come, and as I thought about it, realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d lost my temper on the freeway.
On an even more personal note, the struggle with depression has ended. As I’ve written before, I battled many personal demons in my teens and twenties — and into the dawn of my thirties. What I haven’t shared before is that I spent many years on a variety of anti-depressants and other psychotropic medications. I was twenty when I began taking them; thirty when I stopped. I am convinced that the meds I took in the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s saved my life. But at around the same time as my 1998 conversion experience, I found that I no longer battled the same sort of crushing despair that had characterized my twenties. On a spiritual level, I do believe I was healed by God. But on a physical level, I wonder if my brain didn’t just "outgrow" the tempests of its youth. I don’t know enough about neuropsychology to say, but I’ve been told anecdotally that many folks simply do outgrow certain kinds of mental illness.
Even when my faith has waned (as it does sometimes), that crushing despair has never returned. It’s true that with age, I no longer feel things quite as intensely as I did a decade or two ago. Fewer things make me angry; fewer things make me sad. When I’m happy, I’m deeply, quietly happy; the manic elation of my teens and twenties almost never reappears. When I work with teenagers, and see their volatile emotions on full display, I remember perfectly what it was like to feel that way. But I can also say, with great relief, that I don’t feel that way any longer. That centeredness may be part of God’s gift of faith, but it may also be part of the process of growing older and growing up.
Bring on the gray hairs, bring on the wrinkles! Though I remain all-too-vain about my fitness and my weight, the exterior signs of aging on my head and face don’t bother me in the slightest. A decade ago, I was anxious to fit in with the students whom I taught; today, I feel no desire to be viewed as a "slightly older peer". Yes, growing older has cost me many minutes on my marathon time. It’s put many a line on my face. But it’s also brought me a very deep sense of peace, and it’s brought a degree of emotional stability I never imagined possible. And those rewards are well-worth the slower track times, the aching muscles, and the crow’s feet.
Donald Justice wrote that "men at forty learn to close softly the doors of rooms they will not be coming back to." What doors am I closing, twenty-one months away from forty? I’ve got plenty in mind, but I’d like to think I’ve finally learned to close the door on the "pursuit of everlasting novelty". Most folks, I think, can figure out just how terrible it is to spend one’s life on that hopeless chase. If not, maybe I’ll manage a longer post on the subject.
>I don’t know enough about neuropsychology to say
OK, this comment is super-nerdy.
I’m not an expert, but I have a more-than-passing interest and a few friends who do all the work and then tell me interesting things. I’m told that the neurons in your frontal lobe are not fully myelinated until your mid-thirties.
In English: “myelinated” refers to the development of the myelin sheath around the axis of the neuron. It allows signals to be transmitted faster. Multiple Sclerosis is caused by the breakdown of the myelin sheaths around your neurons and nerves (uh, those are neurons too).
Your frontal lobe is basically what makes you a civilized being with self control and the ability to delay gratification and be considerate towards others. Phineas Gage is a famous example of someone who sustained frontal lobe damage (due to an accident involving a railroad spike). He didn’t lose any memories, didn’t get dumb, but he *did* get violent. Previously a really nice guy, he took to drinking, fighting and beating his wife.
(I mention MS and Mr. Gage because you can tell a lot about what a part of your brain does by looking at cases where that bit doesn’t work.)
So… while a lot of your sensory and cognitive abilities are developing through childhood, that part of your brain is still developing through your twenties and beyond. I doubt that outgrowing mental illness happens consistently, but I’d buy that it happens sometimes.
Well, thank heavens for becoming myelinated. Thanks for sharing, met.
Hear, hear.
Hugo, it is so ironic to me that you posted this on my 55th birthday! As I contemplate my own aging process on this day, my thoughts take a different path as I see someone seventeen years younger than myself pondering the mysteries of growing old! It’s difficult to resist the urge to come out with a patronizing “just you wait, young fella!” But I wouldn’t do that, really! :-)
One thing that I have observed about stanton, release 55.0, in contrast to some earlier versions, is that I no longer hold convictions with the absolute certainty that came so readily before. That’s why the Bob Dylan line, which you have seen me use here, is one of my favorites. It blows me away (do people still say that?) that he wrote My Back Pages at age 23!
Happy b-day, Stanton! And indeed, it’s a wonderful song… “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” is one that I think almost anyone over twenty-five thinks applies to them.
Thanks for the b-day wish. You are probably right about people at twenty-five and over seeing themselves there. But it’s funny how the process continues, even when I thought I had really come to understand a part of the nature of things. A few more years go by, and I am embarrassed at my former naivety. History indicates that I should be every bit as embarrassed in this moment about my present self and my current presumptions as about the past ones.
Well, if I have to choose between perpetual embarrassment and unabashed celebration of each stage of life, I’ll choose the latter. The choice isn’t always so stark, somehow!
Oh, I agree there. The embarrassment part is just something I like to keep in mind when I am engaging in discussions with persons with whom I disagree. It helps me to keep it from getting personal, though I fail in that at times as well. I am all about celebration of life. I’m delighted to be the 55-year-old man that I am, and I intend to enjoy it!
It is becoming a source of great amusement to me as I grow older to observe the fact that people at every stage of life tend to assume that they are the wisest group of people around and that others both older and younger just don’t understand how things work.
I’m about to turn 32 and I agree that something does tend to happen in the early thirties. I can only describe it as a kind of calming down, or as the beginnings of serenity. The same things bother me, but they don’t bother me as much. It’s easier to shrug things off. The sturm and drang that characterised my youth has faded over the years. I like other people more in general, and I’m less likely to hold grudges. I’m appreciating the little things about people that I might not have noticed at a younger age. I’d happily trade this feeling for a few wrinkles any day (although I still retain enough vanity to be flattered that a new co-worker last week guessed my age at 25-26, amusingly enough). Humans are silly creatures, and that thought now makes me chuckle instead of making me frustrated.
Happy B-Day Stanton. I hope you are able to celebrate in the company of family and friends.
I hate the idea of getting older but if you’re saying this temper of mine might temper with age, that’s definitely something to look forward to … :-)