Thinking About: Growing Old

I had my first Flu shot yesterday. After two winters of being very ill I really didn’t want to put up with a third. I couldn’t help thinking last year that this is how old people die – luckily I’m not there yet. Although I am starting to relate to some of the older people I see each day, hobbling about as best they can. Of course I’m only 54 so have got some way to go before I need my walking stick or motorised wheelchair but I can feel it in my bones sometimes – especially as winter approaches.
Statistically I’ve got another 20-25 years left though it seems these days that you longer you live the longer you might live. It’s difficult to know what medical advances will emerge and trickle down in the next two decades or so. What I don’t intend to do is spend too many of my remaining years in work. I’d like to retire at 60 if I can so that I can spend some time doing a PhD – something that I’ve wanted to do for some time now. Also I really can’t see myself dragging my flagging body out of bed in the early hours in my 60’s to be stuck in traffic on the way to the office. Personally I’d rather be poor at home and eating cold beans out of a tin – but we’ll have to see if that’s a practical possibility or not. What I’m not looking forward to (understatement of the year) is being ill in my advancing years. Inevitably you hear horror stories both in the press and from people you know about relatives being ill and being in and out of hospitals and homes for years or even decades progressively slipping away. It is not something I can think about with complete equanimity. My other concern is the possibly decline in my mental faculties. I like thinking and debating too much to view such things with indifference. Hopefully my questioning, to so nothing of my belligerent, nature will keep that prospect at bay as long as possible. Luckily I have known several people who were in their 80’s and beyond who could still argue and think with the best of them so it does happen.

Of course there is an upside to aging – enhanced personal freedom. I have never been one who enjoys being told what to do. With each passing year I become less and less controllable – much, no doubt, to the frustration of those at work who are tasked with ‘managing’ me. I don’t see this changing as my age advances – quite the contrary. After I retire I’ll have no one to answer to – except myself. I suppose the trick at that point is not to completely ‘let go’. It’ll be an interesting challenge I think. Certainly from this perspective I can’t see myself becoming more responsible. I don’t know though. Is my old age an opportunity to become less responsible (or more irresponsible) or simply more of an opportunity to find out who I really am (if I don’t know already)? I should certainly have enough time on my hands to sit and ponder the ‘meaning’ of my life as well as thinking about the Universe and Everything (again hoping that my mental faculties are up to the challenge!)

I certainly intend to keep up my ‘studies’ for as long as I am able, both informally with my reading (much more time to do this without having to work 5 days a week) and hopefully formally with a PhD (if only I could think of something to do it on!), since I doubt that my drive to know will diminish as long as my mind is capable enough to still seek out answers to all of the questions still buzzing through my brain. It’s when I think about all of the stuff I don’t know that I wish the hardest to be able to extend my lifespan indefinitely into the future. Purely science-fiction at this point I know but I can still dream. I know several of my friends are actually horrified by the thought of living for hundreds of years (or longer) but I’d embrace it as long as I was reasonably OK physically and mentally. What I couldn’t stand (presumably only in lucid moments) is indefinitely extended senility. That’s my horror story! I expect, however, that such things are still decades in my future. For now I feel little different than I did 20, 30 even 40 years ago – in my head anyway. More experienced, more knowledgeable, less naïve, less optimistic but still essentially me. The plan is to spin this feeling out until I shuffle off this mortal coil…. At least that’s the plan.