Well…it finally happened. The clerk at the checkout counter asked me if I was 55, and would I like the Senior discount? No? Oh OK – gee I hope you’re not insulted. Sometimes I say that to folks and they get insulted. You’re not? OK, cool.
Aaaauuuuggghh!
When I was young, I used to think I would be one of those people who was really “together” and would grow old gracefully, contemplating my navel happily and learning how to grow roses. Hah. Instead, I’m spittin’ and screamin’, because I AM, along with everyone else on Earth, going to Get Old and Die, and that’s one TV show we can’t turn off.
When I turned thirty, it didn’t really bother me. (Having been a little freaked-out at 29, I was over it once 30 arrived.) When I was 40, I was so damned busy working my ass off to (not) finish my doctoral degree that I didn’t even notice the number as it flew by, except to briefly say “Shit! I forgot to have kids!” I had a cool radio show, I had a great medieval ensemble, and I had no idea that my father was about to die, or that all kinds of other hell was about to break loose.
But fifty kicked my ass. And three years later, it’s still kicking. I’ve kept the lid on this so far by theorizing that it’s mostly hormonal, since 50-ish is the diabolical alter-ego of 13. But I don’t think that’s the whole story, because this 50-crap happens to men, too. Gentlemen, it may comfort you to know that 50 year-old women also suffer from vaguely defined compulsions to suddenly acquire multiple piercings, a racing-green convertible sport BMW and a tattoo. Granted, we don’t so often run off with 25 year old guys…but it ain’t because of us. Twenty-five-year-old women are sometimes attracted to and fascinated by older men, but for most 25-year-old guys, a fifty-ish woman mostly reminds them of Mom, and if any fascination or attraction does occur, it mostly makes them feel a little bit Icky.
Forget about all this “Fifty is the new Thirty” crap. That’s just another slogan dreamed up by my generation, many of whom are clearly still experiencing the effects of too much weed. Calling 50 “midlife” is a kind of deranged denial, and there IS something about 50 that is different from 19 (or 30). Maybe it hits you one day when you walk up a steep hill and you have to stop for about 30 seconds when you get to the top. Or maybe it hits you one morning after staying up until 4 AM one night yakking with some friends, and instead of getting up the next morning and feeling like your happy and horny 19-year-old self, you feel like warmed-over 53-year-old crap. Or, if you are a female, you’re sticking your head in the freezer because your internal thermostat is kaput. Whatever the scenario, the result is that your physical body finally gives you a clue to something that you have never really truly engaged with, no matter how many times your Buddhist teachers said it to you: You Are Going To Die.
Yes, You. Me. Probably not today – but probably in less than another 50 years. Maybe in half of that.
For me this physical realization was definitely triggered by hormonal changes, and might have been intensified by the fact that I neglected to spawn anyone to carry my DNA forward. But I really believe it’s part of the reason that 50 is kicking my ass: since I really, truly felt this Great Truth for the first time, I have experienced an endless cascade of emotional states that surprise me and make me wonder if all this meditation and dharma study has had one iota of effect on my blithering yet overwhelming ego at all. And while my intellect instantly censors these emotional blips as either ridiculous or having no bearing at all in reality (whatever reality is), my physical and emotional reaction to these feelings is very real. So to exorcise some of these beauties, I offer to you, for your viewing enjoyment and in this terrifyingly public forum, The Midlife Crisis Show.
Episode 1: The “Washed Up” Syndrome. This happens on especially bad days. What’s the point in starting any new career paths? You’re 53 years old, for crying out loud. What’s the use of getting any new skills? You don’t really have enough years left to acquire them. (I told you these are ridiculous.) Finish your doctorate? At 53? Are you crazy? What for? You’re just going to die anyhow.
I didn’t say this wasn’t ridiculous. The fact that I am “just going to die anyhow” was true when I was 19 as well. In fact, considering some of my behavior at 19, the risk was probably substantially higher.
I’ve tried to figure out where all this absurdity came from, especially since I come from a family of Old Yankees who in their late 90s had to be physically stopped from doing things like abandoning their walkers in order to clear the wind-fallen large branches off their lawn. Is it because I come from a small blue-collar town where a lot of people spent thirty years desperately waiting to retire, and where too many of them promptly died within 5 years of meeting that milestone? My father could not wait to retire, after 40 years of hurling cement blocks and drum kits around. But, at exactly the same age I am now, he decided to start playing the saxophone-- the instrument he wanted to play as a kid, but didn’t because his parents couldn’t afford it. He got remarkably good at it: the bebop idiom was already in his ears, and all he had to do was teach his fingers how to play what he had already heard in his mind. And yet every time I think of this, my emotions go straight to the fact that just 4 years after he finally was able to retire and spend all his time playing that sax or flying his radio-controlled airplanes, f****** cancer put an end to it. I don’t know why I can’t just say “Isn’t it wonderful that in the last decade and a half of his life he found these things he really loved to do?” Instead, I find myself thinking why the hell should I learn how to play the viola da gamba? I’m just going to die anyhow.
Episode 2: I’m Going to Do All The Stuff I Never Did and Change My Life. This is the opposite extreme, which happens on good days. I’m going to travel to this place and that place, write the following 12 books, learn to play that damned gamba, make at least a dozen more CDs, get a summer house in New England, teach workshops on Music and Spirituality, lose thirty pounds, blah blah blah. And in fact, there is absolutely NO reason why I can’t do those things – I refer you to the 98 year old Yankees cited above, and the 101 year old Tuscans on the other side of the double helix – but this enthusiasm is often short-lived, because, after all, I have to go to work like everyone else and put money in my feeble IRA and pay my mortgage and, oh yeah, I’m just going to die anyhow.
Episode 3: Do These Bifocals Make My Butt Look Big? One of the more curious manifestations of this 50 thing is a sudden obsession with the fact that one will inevitably lose whatever physical attractiveness one has managed to muddle through life with. I must say, it’s a strange obsession for a person who spent most of her life wearing jeans and baggy black sweaters, refusing to spend more than 5 minutes on any given hairstyle, chowing chocolate chip cookies with little regard for their effect on the posterior view of said jeans, and regarding parking-in-the-next-lot-over-from work as “exercise.” The obsession manifests in extremes which swing madly from buying nice clothes and begging the dermatologist to fry off the sun-spots on one’s face, to weeping because no matter what you do, you still look 50, and there’s no turning back. There is no way to reach 90 without looking at least 80, so why panic? I regularly see older people whom I consider extremely attractive; so what’s the deal? What makes me think I will scare small children? It’s a complete ego trip, really, but knowing that doesn’t seem to stop the emotional reaction (although it can sometimes show me the humor in it.)
Episode 4: Things That Make Me Unhappy. It somehow feels imperative to Fix All of These Things Now. This is partly because You’re Going to Die, but partly because because God Forbid you should live another forty years and still be made unhappy by these anathemae, whatever they may be. This particular episode contains a variety of regular sketches, such as 1) The Place I Live Sucks; 2) No One Appreciates What I Do and its sinister variation, I Actually Have No Idea What I’m Doing; 3) My Partner Must Think I’m An Idiot (this plays well with the unattractive obsession outlined above); and 4) Christ, I Have Made So Many Stupid Decisions. These recur during the course of a day like a bunch of happy little Baroque ritornelli. It is basically the Eight Worldly Dharmas (gain and loss, praise and blame, happiness and unhappiness, etc.) on hyperdrive. Alas, this burning need to fix everything that makes one unhappy (rather than fixing your Self) leads to…
Episode 5: Emotional Panic. This sometimes also occurs for no apparent reason. People love to blame this on hormones too, but it also happens when you prepare to read the annual letter from the mammography lab, so I suspect it’s connected to the You Gon’ Die syndrome. The anxiety sometimes happens when one forgets the name of someone one has known for years, or one can’t remember what you call that utensil that people use to eat soup. (My mother tells me that this last thing is hormonal and will go away, only to return for good in another 20 years or so; thanks Ma.) But it’s not just physical stuff. The panic sometimes creeps up when one ponders some unrealized dream that is now unlikely to be realized, or more likely (for me) when I ponder something I’ve done or said (or didn’t do, or didn’t say) that I regret with great force.
The truth is, for both fifty-ish men and women, the only thing that would really make us feel any better about ourselves would be to lose 30 pounds, get some exercise, and find a satisfying spiritual practice, be it simple or complex. In fact, virtually every one of the above “episodes” could be addressed with one of the various Buddhist practices I have been taught. And perhaps they are somewhat effective – after all, I am writing a blogpost instead of driving endlessly around the Loop blaring “All Along The Watchtower” out of the sub-woofers. Wait – I do that too. No…who am I kidding? I’m in a Honda CRW, I’m usually on my way to the garden center, and I’m referencing Jimi Hendrix. I might as well tattoo “50” (uh, 53) on my forehead.
So what to do? Someone once said, live and work as if you were going to live forever, and do your spiritual practice as if you were going to die tomorrow. And as for that first Episode in the Midlife Crisis Show, The Washed-Up Syndrome, I give you a paraphrase from Julia Cameron’s wonderful book “The Artist’s Way,” in which she has a variation on the following question:
Q: What, learn how to play the piano now? Do you know how old I’ll be before I actually learn how to play it?
A: Yes – the same age you’ll be if you don’t.
And there it is, folks. Whatever it is, just do it. Remember Country Joe McDonald singing in the Woodstock movie?
"Welllll, there ain't no time to wonder why;
Yippeee! We're all gonna die."
Go to China, learn the gamba, get another degree, do Half-Handstand, buy the orange jacket. And when 55 does come, take the discount and Run.
