Only as old as you feel

"If I'm ninety and believe I'm forty-five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub."

--Ursula K. Le Guin

Today's my birthday.  At some point in your life, you reach your last year of feeling able to greet birthdays gleefully.  I think I reached that point the year I turned 16 and could get a driver's license.  Turning 21, and being able to drink legally, is pretty anti-climactic for a college student -- it's not as though he's never tasted alcohol until then.

But, today, I accept one more year fairly complacently, even if I'm well past the stage of being gleeful.  So I'm a bit surprised to read the irate reactions of Ursula K. Le Guin to birthday well-wishers, back when she was only a year older than I am now.  The reaction of Ursula -- a formidable writer of science fiction/fantasy --was essentially, "I'm old, old, old, and don't try to sweet talk me into thinking otherwise!"

A lot of younger people, seeing the reality of old age as entirely negative, see acceptance of age as negative.  Wanting to deal with old people in a positive spirit, they're led to deny old people their reality.

With all good intentions, people say to me, "Oh, you're not old!"

And the pope isn't Catholic.   ...

"My uncle's ninety and he walks eight miles a day."

Lucky Unk.  I hope he never meets that old bully Arthur Ritis or his mean wife Sciatica.  ...

Old age isn't a state of mind.  It's an existential situation.

Would you say to a person paralyzed from the waist down, "Oh you aren't a cripple!  You're only as paralyzed as you think you are!  My cousin broke her back once but she got right over it and now she's in training for the marathon."¹

She segues into some rather painfully true statements about ageism in America, all the while insisting on her status as old.  Really old.  Not the kind of "old" who you see laughing and playing tennis in ads for "Golden Years Active Living Housing." Or for Margaritaville, for that matter.

But then, both Ursula and her husband suffered from crippling sciatica that made walking more than a block or two impossible.  Maybe we all end up there eventually.  But I haven't yet, thank you very much.  Meanwhile, feel free to wish me a happy birthday, and feel no guilt whatsoever at assuring me with a straight face that I don't look a day over 35!

Don't offer to buy me a drink -- I"ll buy you one!

--------------------------

¹ Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time to Spare, "The Diminished Thing" (2017)