Gentle is the joy that comes with age

A Washington Post Opinion piece by Anne Lamott.

When we are younger and have troubles, we are almost always encouraged to find like-minded people to talk with, a support group to join, to surround ourselves with others who understand and we can know we are not alone.

Among all the many issues aging people have is the sense that we are doing this alone. You forget where you put your keys and get overwhelmed with shame, try to assure your loved ones you aren’t getting dementia. For whatever reason, the specifics of aging seem hard to talk about. And I’m a very healthy person.

It was with a sense of gratitude that I read Annie Lamott’s piece today in the Washington Post. I have always appreciated her. She has a wicked sense of humour, a lovely way of writing, and she wrote a wonderful positive blurb for my book Saving Sara A Memoir of Food Addiction. How could I not love her?

I want to share this Opinion piece with you. If you are aging as I am, you will recognise parts of yourself. If you aren’t, put it aside, you may want to read it someday.

“It turns out the point of life is gratitude. And gratitude is joy.

Some of my much older friends have 10 doctors or more, like an overeducated friend community. I have only six so far. But time lurches on and the reality is that, before too long, I will have 10, as well. Until then, the point of life is gratitude, modest miseries aside. And gratitude is joy.

Wendell Berry wrote, “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.” Yes, yes, but/and older-age joy is different.

To a great degree, in older age, ambition falls away. Such a relief. Appreciation and surprise bloom many mornings: Yay — I like it here.

We more easily accept the world as is, even as we doggedly keep trying to save it, like aging Smurfs. A man who got sober with me in 1986 said he had come into recovery a big shot, but the guys had helped him work his way up to servant, and he had finally found happiness.

We take it slower, and thus can be amused by the foibles of humanity around us, even as we are alarmed by how quickly the days we have speed by: Kitty Carlisle’s mother said that the best thing about being older is that, every 15 minutes or so, it’s time for breakfast again.

I’m not loving the cognitive decline, which can be so scary at the time but (for me, in the early throes) still ends up being sort of funny.

For instance, yesterday, I needed to pack up some shoes that I’d been auditioning, that even with the custom orthotics provided by my most recent boyfriend, my podiatrist, just didn’t work out. So I printed out the return label and set about wrapping them for the post.

Much of this effort went into sneak attacks by the packing-tape dispenser; each strip I pulled out tried to return to the mother ship. Each time, this required at least five minutes of crotchety scraping to get it restarted, turning me into Andy Rooney. (“What is it about packing-tape dispensers?”) I finally got the shoes all packaged, with the label taped on, and realized I had left my orthotics in the shoes. So I opened the bottom of the box, fished them out and taped the box back up. All this took at least half an hour. I then started out jauntily for the post office and five minutes later realized I had left the shoebox at home.

A good story, and it makes everyone I tell it to feel better about their own condition. Stories are joy.

(P.S. It can be quite time-consuming to be older.)

We also don’t love how simultaneously dried out and leaky we become. An older person must never, ever leave home without Kleenex, and laughing too hard without a squeezey kind of prep can be a setback. But the older people I know laugh and laugh at themselves, because we know things.

We know the truth of and beauty of cycles.

Thistles for younger people are to be avoided at all costs, for obvious reasons, but when you have slowed down, they can be enjoyed, because you won’t be running into or leaping over them. There is beauty in old stalks, even when they are us: It’s tough and lovely to be alive. Thistles in the spring are so pretty. I love their springiness, the power of the breezy soft purple fibers, and then in the summer the kind of Elizabethan glory of those ruffs around their necks. In autumn, the wind blows away all the fluff — the seed pods — leaving the spikes and stalks, which dry up and fall over, as will we all.

But in the meantime?

Older joy is not so much about chasing down things, as it is about what seizes the eye, out the window or on a walk. Older joy is less caffeinated. When you are younger, joy is photographable, for display on the curated Facebook life. Younger joy means endorphins. Older joy feels more like contentment. Someone at my church once said that peace is joy at rest and joy is peace on its feet.

Older age can be a balancing act — how much to put out, how hard to try, how much to let go. And if things aren’t working, how to accept that with grace.

There can be a lot of joy in all that still works with our bodies and minds. The miracle is not high dives and Segways but appreciation, and knowing the great miracle: decades of love and loyalty.

Even someone such as me, who has since birth been more anxious than the average bear, can be less alarmist. By this point, we’ve lived through wars and political crises, earthquakes and droughts, sorrow and way too much death. But almost all the deaths I’ve seen have been gentle. One of my pastors said that death is like falling asleep on the living room floor and waking up in your own bed. Those last weeks are often so sweet, if messy, and filled with grace.

We finally realize we can’t save or fix or rescue anyone, even and especially those we most love. We stop rushing to people’s sides like arthritic St. Bernards with kegs of brandy strapped around our necks. We’ve learned that we cannot reshape their lives, get in there swinging and carry their pain for them. Now? We mostly listen. Sometimes, we lay some money on them. We are lighter than we’ve ever been.

I think a lot less about what other people think of me. Sure, I want to look good, and be charming. But it doesn’t mean that much in the bigger scheme of things. When I’m home alone, or with my husband or son, best friends, reading my book, watching TV, eating my snacks, being kind of a slob, who cares? I’ve arrived.

Now, I’m in it for the deep soul love, where maybe one person is impossible, shut down, annoying or neurotic, but they’re yours, your person, or perhaps they are you, and along with the sun, moon and stars, this love is the light of the world.

I have always been lifted by the bulbs we planted in winter’s cold rocky soil, breaking through hilariously bright and fresh. But I’m so moved now by aged trees, like some nearby old English walnuts. They do their thing for a couple of glorious months a year, loaded with white blossoms, made to make seeds to make more trees. Then they’ve had it. They get old — no need to put makeup on those wrinkled petals any longer. They fade and fall to the ground for the year. But oh, the beauty of old beings, old trees and old us. We made it through. We did our work. And if I’m here in the joy of next spring, I’ll love them again.” —Anne Lamott; Washington Post, July 1, 2024

A bientôt,

Sara