So I turn 52 years old this week. And my father turns 80.
Our birthdays are only two days apart, so for many years our tradition has been to celebrate our birthdays jointly. We drive to be together on the long Memorial Day weekend in late May and have a birthday party where our whole family can fête us both. It is always a happy time, particularly because it comes at the end of the school year. Summer — and summer vacation — are near. The weather is beautiful.
This year is a bit different. My father turns 80 and that is a real benchmark. When he turned 70 and had another such milestone birthday, we all went out and played a softball game together. That was what my father wanted. Now as he turns 80 and his wife is dying of breast cancer (she is 79 years old herself), he is not really in shape to play baseball. My dad overall is in good health, but he is 80. That decade makes a difference. My Uncle Bill is also with us this year, and at 78 and with advanced diabetes he is in the most precarious state of health of us all. It is worrisome.
This is what I have learned: When a person turns 50, they are still pretty young. When they turn 60, they are still young, more or less. Even turning 70 is not that big a deal, although you will want to watch your health. But turning 75 you are on the verge of being old. And when you turn 80, now you ARE old. That is what I have seen with my own eyes.
Now of course there is variation among individuals. Your genetics and the life you have lived can result in a 60 year old who appears to be on death’s doorstep, and I have also met 90 year olds who were spry and seemed to have plenty of life left in them. But on average the preceding paragraph is how people age, as I have seen it.
I have heard some say that 50 is the new 30. Maybe there is truth in that in due to how we tend to spend more time in school and start families later than in the past, and we have better healthcare and nutrition generally today. Socially, 50 might be a bit like 30. But biologically it is not true. 50 is not 30. 50 is not 40. 50 is 50.
One is older. The testosterone in a man’s body diminishes some five percent per year after age 40, and this hormonal difference results in less ability to burn calories, build muscle, and retain vigor. Men tend to develop fat around their bellies, and I am no different. I have a band of excess flesh there that no amount of exercise seems to alter. In addition, things start to go wrong with your body, a process I suspect will only accelerate as one gets older. My 51-year old tennis buddy had some pre-cancerous growths burned off her hand. Another peer had his kidney fail, and now his health is touch and go with a kidney transplant. I talked to a good friend who complained that his wrists (carpal tunnel syndrome) and shoulder hurt almost all the time. Another friend has degeneration in his labrum in the shoulder, and has difficulty raising his arm; an acquaintance from my college fraternity days blew out his labrum/shoulder by aggressively weight lifting into his 50s — he had surgery, will be out for months in recovery, and most likely his shoulder will never be the same. His chosen sport was mixed martial arts, and perhaps that is a sport one does not age gracefully in.
In comparison, I am doing well. I exercise vigorously almost every day. And I cross train so as to reduce the chance of overuse injuries in any one sport: tennis is my passion, but I swim three or four times a week and do Pilates and a number of tennis specific exercises. My doctor told me directly to do this: “Cross train. Use different muscle groups. Be careful with your body. Pay attention.” I listened to him. So I stretch everyday with a chord and do much myofascial release — I use foam rollers, muscle rolling sticks, and various yoga poses. I try to keep the body strong and flexible so as not to get injured — prehabilitation to avoid injury, rather than rehabilitation after one. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. And I focus very consciously on giving my body enough time to recover physically from hard exercise. That is key. As I have gotten older, I need more time to recover. It is not that I cannot hit a hard serve or make a great dash across the court. It is just that I have fewer of them in me, and I will need to rest afterwards to avoid overuse injuries — tendonitis, or worse. Even with so much effort to exercise smart AND hard, my body almost always aches. I am watching this niggle in my elbow or my hip. My lower back or my rotator cuff is tight and achy. “Get back on the foam roller and get that area to release and relax the muscles. Stretch and stretch it again! Tight muscles are weak muscles.” I have these conversations with myself semi-continuously. Your body is always sending you messages, if only you listen.
I try to find the sweet spot: enough tennis so that I can be “in form” and compete at the highest level I can, without too much tennis so that I experience overuse injuries. I have to pay attention and adjust what “too much” looks like as I age. It is not so easy to know. But I would like to avoid the fate of my mixed martial arts fraternity brother who blew his shoulder out trying to train like a much younger man. Aging gracefully is a conscious act.
But one of the primary reasons I exercise so much is because at my age if I don’t my body will feel poorly. Of course I also might put on weight, and maybe have heart or other serious problems like high cholesterol or diabetes. But for me the issue is more simple: my body simply does not feel good if I become sedate. When I was in my twenties and thirties, my body pretty much always felt good — and I paid little attention to it. But now if I play two sets of hard tennis and soak my clothes with sweat (always a good gauge of a workout), then I return home with a good appetite and I sleep soundly. I feel good. I am in a better mood. If I don’t exercise, I barely have any appetite and my food tends not to digest well. I wake up at four in the morning and find it hard to get back to sleep. My metabolism feels like it has slowed down considerably, and perhaps it is natural to eat and sleep less as one gets older. But hard exercise speeds it back up again and helps me to feel younger. It makes me feel vigorous. Young again. I don’t like the alternative. My body feels poorly. So I have come to prioritize hard exercise more than I did in my twenties and thirties. (For the record, I worked out pretty hard then.)
But even with an hour and a half of hard exercise per day, I still have that layer of fat around my middle. It ain’t gonna get any less, but it might get bigger if I don’t keep active. In fact, it will probably get bigger even if I do exercise! And I don’t look any better when I regard myself in the mirror. Every year I look a little older, a little worse. That also ain’t gonna change. But in your fifties you are mostly beyond caring overly much about physical attractiveness. But if I care less how I look to others, I care more how I look to myself — am I strong and in good health? — am I doing my best? I will know the answer in my heart to such questions. I remember reading about a conversation tennis pro Andy Roddick had when he was dating his future wife, the supermodel Brooklyn Decker. She was relating the stress of having to watch what she ate and maintain a certain ultra-thin look for her modeling job. He replied, “It is not about being thin and appealing to the camera. It should be about being strong and healthy, and as a result able to perform the physical tasks life requires without discomfort or injury.” Roddick was totally right. Function is way more important that form.
The pains of getting older are obvious. But the blessings, though more subtle, are real. One feels relieved from the pressures of dating/mating, and trying to be attractive to the opposite sex. Older men are also less aggressive and less violent than younger men, although this is not always true. The testosterone is less and the mood swings diminish; the passions, to a degree, subside with fewer hormones. At least, this is the case with me. There is pleasure in being less tethered to the turbulent storms of life. Perspective. Equanimity. Wisdom?
I used to care much more about how much money I made or where I was competitively in society. I was more preoccupied with politics and took it more personally. I CARED more. About almost everything. In my 20s and 30s I would look back and fret if I had made the right decisions in life. Could I have gone into business rather than become a teacher? Live in a bigger house? Be rich and famous? What do others think of me? In politics I felt that if I did not counter THIS political view than THAT might happen, and I could not bear THAT candidate gaining prestige or getting elected. “I have to fight the good fight!” I thought. I am done fighting now. I look back much more rarely; I engage in self-doubt less; I am who I am. That is not going to change. Instead I look fixedly at the two or three decades of life I (hopefully) have left. I intend not to waste them. How should I live when I am 55, 65, or 75? What will that be like? Who cares about when I was 25 or 35? That is gone. And it is more than a few years ago already.
When your physical abilities begins to decline, you begin to appreciate what is left. You nurture it. I certainly have. When your end is nearer than your beginning, there is no time to waste in pointless arguments or unhelpful anguish. Life is a series of present moments, one heaped on top of the other. Then one day it is over. Enjoy the now, provide for the future, and waste not. Let younger people, or foolish people, spin their wheels and gnash their teeth. “Avoid angry people if at all possible,” has been my mantra for some time. But it is hard to do in the age of Donald Trump.
So it is as I turn 52.
Happy birthday, Richard. Your body is aging but it still serves you well. It is your friend, not your enemy. With intention and focus, go out and beat that 35 year old on the tennis court. And watch out or you will lose to that crafty, careful 65 year old who trains as much as you off the court as on. I even know a 70 old who will beat me occasionally in doubles, if I am not sharp and paying close attention. Age notwithstanding, he is a solid 4.5 tennis player!
And in three years, you can sign up for the senior tennis league teams.
And in less than a decade you will be retired.
Still playing competitive tennis, hopefully.
Good things ahead.
Amen.
