1. Never look into full mirrors. Scenario: you are visiting your daughter, you’ve just stepped out of the shower, and you happen to glance at the full mirror above the double sink. What you see there might well cause cardiac arrest. So never never never look into a full mirror. My own bathroom has a tiny mirror above the sink, and even then I sometimes go for a year, shaving and brushing my teeth, without looking at myself. If vampires can do it, so can you.
2. View your body with the eyes of a toddler. Look at the typical three year old. He walks around without a shirt, gut hanging over his underwear, blueberries smeared on his face, bits of candy plastered on his hair, hands as sticky as a honey-comb. If a squirt like this can be comfortable in his body, so can you.
3. Try puttin’ on the Ritz when you go public. Many Americans now dress like slobs. Astound your friends and family by dressing up rather than down. Buy a tux. Put on a coat and tie for that Thanksgiving meal. Carry a cane or an umbrella, which gives you gravitas and can also serve as an effective weapon against muggers. (Addendum: to all you men over sixty in the changing room at the YMCA, please, for the love of God and all that’s holy, wear a towel when you’re strolling around the locker area. A t-shirt wouldn’t kill you either).
4. Avoid dating—or even ogling—women thirty years younger than yourself. I don’t care if you do have a million in the bank and drive a convertible. If you want to maintain a shred of dignity, it’s hands off, buddy. Young women for a guy your age are like flowers in a public park: look all you want and savor the fragrance, but no plucking.
5. Skip the plastic surgery. Look at guys like Clint Eastwood or Robert Redford. You don’t see their cheeks chipmunk puffy with Botox. Wear those wrinkles with pride. You earned them.
6. Avoid repeating stories and jokes. I am a teacher who’s always telling stories in the classroom. Many of my students take classes with me for three, four, and five years, and thus suffer the same jokes three and four times. Borrrrring. (Note to self: get some new jokes).
7. Think twice before you bring up “the good old days.” My own good old days included racial segregation, polio, a cold war, hippie communes, Nehru jackets, Jimmy Carter, and bad restaurants. (The good old days also included typewriters for composing essays like this one. I miss the sound of a typewriter, but as for the rest: you can have my laptop when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers).
8. Schedule a colonoscopy. In addition to protecting your health, this whole procedure will bring excitement and entertainment to your otherwise humdrum life. You drink the cleanser, rush to the toilet every couple of hours throughout the night, lose four or five pounds, and spend the next morning in a chemically induced haze while the doctor runs a tiny camera through your colon. If you’re lucky, as I was, he’ll even invite you to watch the film. (Head’s up: you’ll need to bring your own popcorn).
9. Accept the idea that you’re going to die someday. There are various schools of thought on death: Hemingway (“Try not to think about it”); Woody Allen (“I don’t believe in the afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear”); Islamist (“Kill a bunch of infidels and win 70 virgins”); Catholic Christianity (“Three stops on the train ride, folks: heaven, purgatory, hell”); Christianity Lite (“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die”); Thomas Hobbes (“It’s my turn to take a leap into the darkness”). I could go on, but you get the picture. However we envision death, I’m not sure we can ever really and truly imagine the fact of our own demise. What we can do is acknowledge its reality and then get on with living.
10. Stop adding up your losses and start looking for discoveries. It’s true, life is a taker, a thief. Friends and family die or move away; bank accounts are depleted; physical and mental powers wane.
But life is also a giver. If we try to look at the world with new eyes, we may begin to sense its mystery and the beauty, sometimes the dreadful beauty, of that mystery.
Let’s turn for some illumination here to Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. In the third act, Emily, who has died in childbirth, is given the chance to relive a day in her life. She picks her twelfth birthday. When she visits her old home that day, she realizes with terror and sadness how fast life is slipping past and how little anyone notices. “We don’t even have time to look at one another!” At the end of the play, she asks the Stage Manager, “Doesn’t anyone ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?” The Stage Manager replies, “No. Saints and poets, maybe; they do some.”
We may not be saints or poets, but we have eyes and four other senses. We can realize life by looking for new things every day, in books, in film, in nature, in people. We can emulate that toddler and delight as he does in what we find. Discovery and appreciation are food for the soul and the mind.
The good and the beautiful--they’re all around us, for those with eyes to see.
3. Try puttin’ on the Ritz when you go public. Many Americans now dress like slobs. Astound your friends and family by dressing up rather than down. Buy a tux. Put on a coat and tie for that Thanksgiving meal. Carry a cane or an umbrella, which gives you gravitas and can also serve as an effective weapon against muggers. (Addendum: to all you men over sixty in the changing room at the YMCA, please, for the love of God and all that’s holy, wear a towel when you’re strolling around the locker area. A t-shirt wouldn’t kill you either).
4. Avoid dating—or even ogling—women thirty years younger than yourself. I don’t care if you do have a million in the bank and drive a convertible. If you want to maintain a shred of dignity, it’s hands off, buddy. Young women for a guy your age are like flowers in a public park: look all you want and savor the fragrance, but no plucking.
5. Skip the plastic surgery. Look at guys like Clint Eastwood or Robert Redford. You don’t see their cheeks chipmunk puffy with Botox. Wear those wrinkles with pride. You earned them.
6. Avoid repeating stories and jokes. I am a teacher who’s always telling stories in the classroom. Many of my students take classes with me for three, four, and five years, and thus suffer the same jokes three and four times. Borrrrring. (Note to self: get some new jokes).
7. Think twice before you bring up “the good old days.” My own good old days included racial segregation, polio, a cold war, hippie communes, Nehru jackets, Jimmy Carter, and bad restaurants. (The good old days also included typewriters for composing essays like this one. I miss the sound of a typewriter, but as for the rest: you can have my laptop when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers).
8. Schedule a colonoscopy. In addition to protecting your health, this whole procedure will bring excitement and entertainment to your otherwise humdrum life. You drink the cleanser, rush to the toilet every couple of hours throughout the night, lose four or five pounds, and spend the next morning in a chemically induced haze while the doctor runs a tiny camera through your colon. If you’re lucky, as I was, he’ll even invite you to watch the film. (Head’s up: you’ll need to bring your own popcorn).
9. Accept the idea that you’re going to die someday. There are various schools of thought on death: Hemingway (“Try not to think about it”); Woody Allen (“I don’t believe in the afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear”); Islamist (“Kill a bunch of infidels and win 70 virgins”); Catholic Christianity (“Three stops on the train ride, folks: heaven, purgatory, hell”); Christianity Lite (“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die”); Thomas Hobbes (“It’s my turn to take a leap into the darkness”). I could go on, but you get the picture. However we envision death, I’m not sure we can ever really and truly imagine the fact of our own demise. What we can do is acknowledge its reality and then get on with living.
10. Stop adding up your losses and start looking for discoveries. It’s true, life is a taker, a thief. Friends and family die or move away; bank accounts are depleted; physical and mental powers wane.
But life is also a giver. If we try to look at the world with new eyes, we may begin to sense its mystery and the beauty, sometimes the dreadful beauty, of that mystery.
Let’s turn for some illumination here to Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. In the third act, Emily, who has died in childbirth, is given the chance to relive a day in her life. She picks her twelfth birthday. When she visits her old home that day, she realizes with terror and sadness how fast life is slipping past and how little anyone notices. “We don’t even have time to look at one another!” At the end of the play, she asks the Stage Manager, “Doesn’t anyone ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?” The Stage Manager replies, “No. Saints and poets, maybe; they do some.”
We may not be saints or poets, but we have eyes and four other senses. We can realize life by looking for new things every day, in books, in film, in nature, in people. We can emulate that toddler and delight as he does in what we find. Discovery and appreciation are food for the soul and the mind.
The good and the beautiful--they’re all around us, for those with eyes to see.