Unlike then 102-year old Oscar Niemeyer who after 100 years, said “it’s all crap,” author and neurologist Oliver Sacks says he “does not think of old age as an even grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of.”
On the contrary, he observes, it’s “a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings a lifetime together.” And not only that, he’s looking forward to turning 80 tomorrow.
Oliver Sacks © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons
That’s what he wrote in a thoughtful — nay, an uplifting essay in Sunday’s New York Times, The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.)
Sacks joins a long line of sage observers throughout history, arts and science urging the rest of us to live more fully the worthwhile messiness of life.
It’s something I’ve frequently posted about, especially after having already crossed the threshold well past the middle-earlies.
This is the time when life starts hitting back with what George Clooney says is meanness. Like when dear friends die too young and too soon. Or when beloved family members are seemingly here one moment and then suddenly gone. It’s no wonder that contemplative musings of people like Oliver Sacks find a place and have so much reflective resonance.
So no matter that it’s all been said before or that it’ll all be said again — and again.
When Sacks writes about hoping for a few more years “to love and work” and to “die in harness,” that’s essentially the appeal of all those admonitions about seizing the day. It’s also what makes someone like Klaus Obermeyer on the other side of 90 — so inspirational.
Additionally, it’s the fascination of someone like 90-year old Ilona Royce Smithkin — another anti-curmudgeon prescribing her own antidotes to life’s meanness.
After 9 decades, Ilona has found her own secret to aging with grace. It’s in resolving to find joy and to surrounding yourself with friends with a positive point-of-view. Sounds simple.
But it’s also an outlook she grounds in selflessness and in having found something to enjoy — her art, bright colors, and fashion.
Finding our own something to enjoy is what she recommends for the rest of us.
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Photo Credits: “Angry Old Man,” by Arend Arend Vermazeren at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution; 9.13.09 OliverSacks ByLuigiNovi.jpg, Luigi Novi at Wikipedia Commons with required attribution under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license; “Heavy Horse,” by David Merrett at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution.
