By LARRY TRITTEN
“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”
— Madeleine L’Engle
Old age has traditionally been something people look forward to with as much enthusiasm as a raconteur might show for the performance of a mime. Consider the way the subject is treated in books and movies, particularly in the sub-genre of fantasy stories about the quest for immortality. Thwarting old age is the goal in these tales, which invariably end with old age spectacularly triumphant; e.g., in H. Rider Haggard’s She the title character is a 2,000-year-old beautiful woman who maintains her youthful appearance by bathing in a pillar of fire, until one day something goes awry and all of those centuries catch up with her instantaneously, leaving her looking somewhat less sightly than Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz; Dorian Gray has a portrait of himself that serves as a sort of artistic Doppleganger, aging in his stead, but inevitably Dorian too is the victim of a situation in which the process runs in reverse, leaving him a superannuated carcass on the floor in front of his youthful portrait; and Dracula, in countless movie adaptations of Bram Stoker’s novel, usually also ends his run as a well-preserved bon vivant, either by having a stake driven through his heart or by getting a lethal dose of sunlight like the one in the Hammer film version, The Horror of Dracula, that leaves Drac looking like the emptied contents of a vacuum-cleaner bag. Even Mel Gibson, in Forever Young, has half a century catch up with him all at once, although he still looks pretty fit and lively as a septuagenarian, with his sex appeal (and presumably libido) essentially intact.
The Upbeat Message to be taken from that flick, with Gibson hand in hand with his sexagenarian girlfriend, is that while immortality may be an unattainable fantasy, staying young is not. Age is, of course, a chronological statistic, but youthfulness is a matter of attitude.
Today is the best time in history to be getting older. Modern medicine, sanitation, and lifestyles are constantly extending the lifespan of humans. Two hundred years ago 80 percent of the population would be dead by the age of 50. Today less than 10 percent die by the age of 50.
An ingenious short story by J.G. Ballard, Time of Passage, uses a premise in which life begins at the point of one’s death and runs in reverse, with one becoming progressively younger, ever more vigorous, and youthfully exuberant until vanishing in time as a mewling infant. It’s a design for life that arguably might have been an improvement on the current one, considering that it makes life a more upbeat trip, with the body becoming progressively stronger and more energetic instead of the opposite. In any case, the condition of the body notwithstanding, old age can still be effectively contended with by a youthful attitude.
As for the body, we live in a time when there are all sorts of methods for keeping it in optimum shape as we get older: self-actualization philosophies and diet and exercise regimens. These coexist ironically with some pervasive negative factors — the popularity of fast food and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle in fealty to computer and TV screens. If you would see the effect of these factors on the populace, turn on one of the daily TV talk shows like The Jerry Springer Show or The Maury Povich Show, whose guests tend to be common people, a startling percentage of whom have the physical dimensions of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade float balloons. In the matter of longevity, genes are probably of primary importance, although exercise and diet are no doubt vital factors — but I suspect that attitude trumps all of these.
I’m talking about attitude that makes you interested in the world and life however old you might be. Some people seem immune to such interest even at the high noon of post-pubescence, being constitutionally incapable of seeing the fascination of anything from a dazzling sunrise to a major news event. They simply lack the sense of wonder that makes life interesting and enjoyable.
That sense of wonder is as important to staying young as cultivation is to a well-tended garden. If you have it you might find yourself, like Jeanne Calment, of Arles, France, releasing a rap CD at the age of 121. Madame Calment died in 1997 and was blind and in a wheelchair at the time, but was still mentally alert and enthusiastic about life and claimed that she was never bored. Now think of that familiar incantation so many kids use to comment on any number of things: “Bo-ring!”
The benefits of exercise, of keeping physically active, are obvious, but the issue of diet and aging is somewhat problematical. Madame Calment claimed that her longevity could be attributed to a lifelong intake of olive oil, port wine, and chocolate, but after she died the woman then accepted to be the oldest person in the world was a 117-year-old Canadian, Marie-Louise Febronie Meilleur — a vegetarian.
This was good press for the Vegetarian Society until Marie-Louise promptly died and the record passed to a 117-year-old American woman who hated vegetables and whose diet was highlighted by such things as pretzels, chocolate, and a variety of sweets. Perhaps Popeye’s burger-addicted friend, Wimpy, is doing quite well to give short shrift to the spinach relentlessly touted by his hero.
It may be useful to have role models in the matter of staying young while getting older. Madame Calment surely qualifies as one such. For a long time I’ve cited Grandma Moses, especially to those in any sort of creative profession. Grandma Moses raised her family and then started painting at the age of 75, and subsequently had a 25-year career as a famous artist.
In that same league was my own Grandma Tritten. I used to visit her in the late 40s and early 50s in the same little house by the railroad tracks she had lived in since the 1800s. I didn’t realize then that she had been a teenage girl the year of Custer’s Last Stand. In these later years she still lived as she had as a pioneer woman — the house had no indoor plumbing or electricity.
She was unfailingly cheerful and good-natured, and her state of the art entertainments were not the Internet and television but such candlelight pastimes as card games and jigsaw puzzles.
A current role model is my friend Norman Corwin, who teaches a course in journalism at USC at the age of 96. Norman has been a high profile figure as writer / director / producer in the fields of radio, TV, movies, theater, and books for quite a few decades, and at the 2006 Academy Awards a film titled The Golden Age of Norman Corwin won the Oscar for Best Documentary —Short Subject. His brother is a few years older than Norman, and their father lived to be 112. Norman has, you can be sure, a great incapacity for boredom.
Older role models notwithstanding, I’m convinced that the company of young people will contribute considerably to making one feel and act young. I tend to seek their company more than that of people my age, and most of my friends at this point are decades younger than me and I daresay more enlivening to be with. Yet far from being disproportionate, these relationships are purely symbiotic. My attitude is that I can teach young friends some of the things I’ve learned about life, and I know from experience that they can teach me some of the things I’ve forgotten.
Anyone who lives long enough to become a senior becomes in essence a time traveler, one whose trip is made in real time and who travels from the world of their childhood to an entirely different, technologically advanced world of the future. Being comfortable in that future world requires maintaining a youthful flexibility and openness to change. Stay young. Treasure your memories, but make the scene today and create new ones. Read new books, go to new movies, listen to new music. Climb new mountains. Get out on the dance floor and make new moves. Enjoy the trip.
LARRY TRITTEN is a freelance writer who has sold more than a thousand pieces since the ’70s, credits including The New Yorker, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, Playboy, Travel & Leisure, National Geographic Traveler, Rolling Stone, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, New York and L.A. Times, Washington Post and Wall St. Journal, dozens of others.
