Sam Smith - I’ve discovered that being in your 80s is like being a teenager. You don’t know how to do it, nobody shows you how to do it, and nobody likes how you do it.
In less than two weeks I turn 87 and you would think I’d figured it out by now but I still have a long way to go. Part of the problem is that extending life into the 80s was good work on the part of scientists and doctors but they forgot to tell us what to do with it. Other professions have not been any help. They have, in effect, created a virtue without providing a purpose.
I became newly aware of this when Joe Biden was being attacked for thinking about running for reelection. I was struck by the way these attacks were so unembarrassedly critical compared, say, to what one is permitted to say about somebody’s race or gender.
Which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my extended status on this earth. As a journalist, about the worst issue age creates is figuring out whether you’ve already wrote that before. And one of the great advantages of the period is that you have already made the mistakes those younger than you are now making. And you know what to do about it.
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