"Too Old" For What?

We’ve been watching the Olympic Trials on TV.  I am particularly dazzled by the ability of gymnasts to do what they do.  Someone flips through a triple twist vault and sticks the landing—or suspends themselves interminably between rings in the air like an uber-muscular crucifix.  I lamely joke to the family watching with me that I’m now too old to do that any more—as though there were ever a day in my life when I was capable of anything more than a clumsy somersault. 

But there are some things I actually used to be able to do that I can’t do any more.  I used to run a few miles every morning.  Can’t do that any more.  I used to play tennis four or five times a week.  I can’t do that any more.  I used to control a pitching sailboat through stormy waters.  I can’t do that any more, either.

Just this morning, as Patti and I were enjoying our coffee on the porch watching a dozen birds feast at our feeders, a stiff warm breeze danced though the apple orchard—sometimes suddenly whipping the leaves wildly with heavy gusts.  I commented that this very windy day made me think of our decades of sailing the Maine coast—and how I realize I am really glad not to be out there on such a blustery day.  I am too old, too unstable afoot, too puny of upper body strength, too slow-witted in an emergency to competently manage a sailboat and a crew and guests while the winds and waves continually pitch the boat side to side, fore and aft, flailing the sails and jostling the people on board, challenging my ability to keep all and everyone—including myself—in balance.

I did it very competently for seventy years or so.  Now I am too old for that.

I am fortunate in a way that Joe Biden may not be.  I find it surprisingly easy to acknowledge when I am too old for something, and to let it go, to move on to something else.  While my family and other friends have always been remarkably enthusiastic in support of my various pursuits over the years, they seem equally supportive of my letting go of what I need to relinquish as I age, in order to assume new delights better suited to who I have become over the years.

The saddest moment of the evening last night was the post-debate “party” when Jill Biden chirped, “Joe, you answered every question!”  A kindergartener would have been offended by the patronizing gush of praise.  Adult Americans merely cringed and looked away, as if witnessing elder abuse.

Observers like to use “too old” as a verdict about someone else.  That is their privilege.  But “too old” is better seen as a question—a question for an individual to ask about themselves.  About themselves not only as an individual, but as a member of a human community.   His overprotective cortege may not speak the truth to him, but Joe Biden himself has had the benefit of witnessing one of the truly great Americans—RBG—fail to grasp this larger question.  He is not too old to learn from her tragic example.