(Dobbs) Winning or Finishing or Trying. All Something To Celebrate
Every birthday's better than the last.
Back one day when I was young, I went to lunch with a friend in Chicago on his birthday. His 30th. He was depressed. He was dour. He thought that his best years were behind him, that his life was pretty much over.
I felt sorry for him. So sorry, I bought the lunch.
Well, today’s my birthday, my 77th, and I see things the other way around: every new day is a gift. Every new day is another beginning. As the old comedian George Burns once said, “I get up every morning and read the obituaries and if I don’t see my name, I make breakfast.”
I’ve made breakfast for 77 years now, and counting. Or at least, someone’s made it and I’ve eaten it!
Of course life at 77 isn’t like life at 27. Or 37. Or for that matter, 57. Time Magazine essayist Roger Rosenblatt is 83, and recently wrote about his wife’s and his life the past couple of years: “Not a day has passed without one of us seeing a doctor, arranging to see one or thinking or talking about seeing one.”
This is true. But it’s only part of the story.
The other part is exemplified by a woman named Dorothy Hoffner. Last week, leaning on a walker, Ms. Hoffner made her way to the side of a small airplane in central Illinois, was helped up the steps, the plane took off, and when they reached an altitude of 13,500 feet, she said “Let’s go, let’s go, Geronimo” and, wrapped in a parachute and tethered to a certified instructor, jumped out. According to The Associated Press, “She tumbled out of the plane, head first, completing a perfect forward roll in the sky, before flying stable in free fall with her belly facing the ground.”
She will probably be certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest skydiver ever. In December, Dorothy Hoffner will turn 105. “Age,” she says, “is just a number.”
I measure my age by how I ride my bike. One of my favorite go-to rides is a mountain pass here in Colorado that climbs 2,300 vertical feet— to a summit 10,600 feet above sea level— over a distance of about 10 miles. I used to keep a running total in my mind of how many cyclists I passed and how many passed me. Years ago, the ratio was positive. Eventually it turned negative. Now, I just don’t bother. In the “how many I passed” category, it’s not hard to keep track of zero. I used to say, winning is winning. Now I say, finishing is winning. Soon I might be saying, doing it is winning, whether I finish or not.
But that doesn’t bother me. I’m 77. I'm not as strong as I once was, I'm not as fast, I don't last as long. You can’t live this long without body parts losing some of their punch, and in some ways, the brain too. I don’t let myself feel sorry that there are certain things I can’t do as well as I used to any more…. or maybe can’t even do at all. The question is, did I do them once? If I did, that’s something to celebrate.
When I turned 70, I wrote a piece that began with the joke, “There was a time in my life when I wouldn’t have gotten in a car with a 70-year-old at the wheel. Now I do it every day.” I’m not saying that 70 is the new 60, but what you realize when you reach this age is that if you’re lucky— meaning unlike some unlucky friends, you’ve dodged some bullets just to get this far— it doesn’t feel like you once thought it would.
Of course there are a lot of bullets to dodge. As I used to tell donors when I was on the board of a hospice, death and disability and disease don’t discriminate. Neither does a bus when you’re crossing the street and you look the wrong way. And of course, we’re stuck with our DNA. Plenty of things conspire against us.
But plenty of things work in our favor too. New York Times contributor Holly Burns wrote a piece last week titled, “How to Change Your Mind-Set About Aging,” and the conclusion was, “People who think positively about getting older often live longer, healthier lives.” What a 90-year-old Alabama woman told her about being old was, “You no longer have a lot of the struggles you had. There’s a lot more peace.”
That’s true too. Everyday stress is inevitable in every person’s life, and it doesn’t make it easier to reach a ripe old age. Yet unless we go off to live in a dark cave, we can’t escape it— anyway, there’d be stress of a different kind holed up in a dark cave. But if wisdom does come with age, the wisdom I’ve acquired allows me to reduce my stress by erasing two words from my vocabulary: worry, and regret. What’s the point of worrying about something bad that hasn’t happened? Do what you can to prevent it or at least to mitigate it, but there’s no reason to get your stomach all tied up in knots worrying about it. And what’s the point of regret? If you made a mistake, learn from it, and at risk of repeating myself, if there’s a chance of it happening again, do what you can to prevent it or at least to mitigate it. But you’re not helping yourself if your stomach is churning with regret.
And, there’s one word that is in my vocabulary that keeps stress down. It is a word I used to hear a lot in the Arab world: “malesh.” What it means is, don’t agonize over things you can’t control. Whether you’re stuck in rush hour traffic or your property taxes went up, it’s too bad, but don’t sweat it because that won’t change it. Just think, malesh.
Perhaps because baby boomers— once the biggest generation in history— are now all senior citizens, a lot of attention has been focused on us. I just watched a 4-part series on Netflix called “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones.” The blue zones are a few parts of the world with a much higher than average proportion of centenarians.
The very first words spoken in the documentary are, “Most of us don’t even want to think about dying. Getting frail, losing vitality. Closing our eyes for the last time. But one thing’s for sure: it’s coming. The question is, when? How many years will you get out of your body? And, do we even have any say in the matter?”
The answer to the last question is, yes and no. No, because some of those bullets— disease, disability, DNA— can be too strong to stop. But the program focuses on the “yes” part. In the blue zones, the cornerstones for living long lives, and healthy lives, are exercise, having purpose in your life, having social connections, and a wholesome diet (but don’t worry, the centenarians in Okinawa eat plant-based food, the ones in Sardinia eat plenty of carbs).
Even if I think I can check those boxes, I just don’t expect to reach the age of 100. The odds, and what the insurance companies call “preexisting conditions,” are against it. But no matter how many years I do have ahead of me, I’m loving this birthday, and expect to love the next one even more.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Greg, this is just wonderful. Made my day. What I needed. Thank you!
Happy birthday, Greg. I wish you many more years on the bike or doing whatever else brings serenity and health. Nice piece on getting older. I think America has become the land of uber anxiety and insecurity. I feel fortunate to not be succumbing to all that.