Today I turned 75. Gee, the years keep going by, my age keeps increasing, but I don’t feel any different. Here I am in June, 1970 — 55 years ago. I feel like the same guy in the photograph:
Well, yes, there are some changes. Physically, I have lost my stamina. I remember in high school I would run up the hill near our house. It was about 200 feet high and I could run all the way up to the top without breaking my pace. I was panting hard when I reached the top, but my lung capacity was up to the challenge. But now, I have almost no stamina. If I try hard work — lifting log segments or dragging heavy stuff, say — I last only about half an hour. Even dragging slash from the forest floor to the burn pile, usually about a hundred feet, tires me out after about two hours. I do a lot of walking, because the house, the garage, the shop, and the barn are all separated from each other by a few hundred feet. Too much walking and I need to take a break.
But this doesn’t bother me too much; it is to be expected. My body is getting old. I wake up many times during the night and sometimes can’t get back to sleep; then I often get up, eat a little bread or even a bowl of cereal, then go back to bed.
Actually, I’m in pretty good physical shape for my age. Most strangers are surprised to learn my age; I seem younger to people. My doctor seems happy with my state of health. The only significant health problem is that I’m skittering right along the edge of diabetes, but between exercise and a little weight loss, I seem to be staying ahead of the problem. I had a muscle pain in my right arm that has taken months to heal; it still hurts when I use that arm too much. I think that using the mouse exacerbates the problem.
I am more concerned about my mental degradation. My memory has gone to hell; I must make a special effort to remember anything. If I move something away from its normal location, I usually lose it. I really must clean up my office and workshop so as to make it harder to lose things.
Oddly, my ability to engage in high-level thinking is not impaired in the least; indeed, I feel that, when it comes to orchestrating a zillion facts in a deeply insightful analysis, I’m more capable that any previous time. Just look at these three essays that I have written this year: Speculations on Cosmology, More Nonsense about Colonizing Mars, and Negentropy Machines.
However, my ability to program has gone down the tubes. Programming truly is a young person’s job; it’s the mental analogue of juggling a chain saw, a cat, a burning candle, and a horseshoe. Programming requires one to dot every i and cross every t, except there are 27 different kinds of i’s and 34 different kinds of t’s — plus some other letters than aren’t even in the alphabet. I simply cannot keep straight all the million and one details required to write good software. Often I call my friend Dave Walker to bitch and moan to him about how broken programming languages and operating systems are. He always looks at my work patiently and later explains to me the point I misunderstood. It seems that every time I want to pin the blame on the technology, he observes that the problem was pilot error.
The increasing complexities of technology have left me so frustrated that I refuse to engage with it. Our smart television is too damn smart for my taste. No, I don’t want to learn its three hundred and thirty-three special capabilities; I just want to watch the fucking TV. The televisions of my childhood had just two controls: one dial turned the TV on and controlled the volume of the audio; the other dial allowed you to switch between the 12 channels. Yes, I do like the big screen, the magnificent detail, and the many different channels available to me; but can we please keep it simple?
There are also some mental kinks popping up. Every morning I wake up with a musical ear worm repeating in my head. It’s a different one every time; sometimes it’s the jingle from an ancient commercial. But it is insistent. I can always defeat it by playing “Red River Rock” in my head. It’s a battle I have to fight every morning.
My greatest fear for myself in old age comes from my observation that most old people are either bitter or happy. We all suffer so many tribulations in life, and some people allow their tribulations to take control of their mental life. Others have learned that a smile conquers all disappointments, and sail through old age. I seem to oscillate between (rare) bitterness and a generally sunny disposition. We have five dogs and I love every one of them, but I know that they will die and, when they do, I will be consumed with grief. But now I remind myself “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”, and I spend more time loving my dogs. All those projects that used to dominate my life seem less important than what is closer to home. Doing stuff to impress others seems less and less important to me; those people won’t benefit much from my efforts. But Roxy the dog wags her tail when I pet her; that is more important these days. I work in the forest, improving its overall health and feeling ever-greater syntony with it. I now know who I am, and my identity is melding with that of my local biosphere. Having cast aside all cares for the regard of others, I am happy.