This is your brain on 60
Well, it happened: I turned 60. It was shocking when my husband did it this past July, but I wasn’t the one having to have all the feels. I just watched from the sidelines, tossing bland reassurances his way and snuggling deeper into my cozy, enviably young, 59-ness.
It’s not like I didn’t see my turn coming. At 17, I could feel the unmistakable drumbeat of time thumping in my chest. By 20, I’d been expelled from college, waylaid by an eating disorder, and I realized the thumping in my chest wasn’t time but depression. Years would pass before I could get my sea legs, before I felt like time was expanding, rather than collapsing, on me in waves.
My sense of personal time has felt different in every decade. Some years I felt mostly young, like there was plenty of time to find my way, make a path, change course, make a new path. Some years the tide of my anxiety washed in unfailingly at 3 a.m., awakening me to a laundry list of frightening realities, one of which was the fact of my aging. These last few years there’s been a tug-of-war between my intellect and my body, with my brain whining that I’m decrepit, while my body makes a case for its stubbornly good health. Throughout the old-feeling years and the young-feeling years, one thing remained constant: I knew that at some point I’d be old for real, most likely before I was ready.
I definitely don’t feel ready. Sixty feels calamitous. Not surprisingly — because the world has a way of reflecting back to us whatever we are feeling — the last few weeks of my 50s were filled with calamity. I locked my keys in my car, got a wicked fever from my COVID-19 booster shot and broke a tooth. Two days later, I caught my hair on fire at a party, and a few days after that, I hit a pigeon, broke the same tooth again and was told I need surgery on both of my wrists. I’m not superstitious, but I have to wonder if these are clues to what the next decade has in store.
I know that people handle aging differently. As a hyperactive 10-yearold, my husband would be bouncing around his living room in a desperate search for something to do while his parents watched sleepily from their recliners.
“You won’t have all that energy when you’re old like us,” they warned. They were 32.
My mother, who has complained of being old ever since I can remember understanding language, has nevertheless always lived as a young person. She returned to school and got her master’s degree in counseling at age 57. At 70, she was rocking rhinestone boots and a matching baseball cap. At 83, she told me she wasn’t quite ready for another dog, but maybe in a few years.
She’s 92 now, cooks dinner every night for herself and her 97-yearold partner, works out five days a week and still finds time to call and tell me the reason I need surgery on my wrists is not because I’m genetically predisposed (i.e. she passed the problem down to me) but is instead the result of my dogs tugging at their leashes. If there’s anything classier than a 60-year-old and her 92-year-old mother arguing heatedly about, well, anything, I don’t know what it is.
In preparation for turning 60, I asked friends to share the best advice they’ve ever gotten.
“There’s no road map to aging,” one friend warned me. “I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
While she’s not wrong, I’m still curious what other people have found helpful in their lives. Maybe this is because my parents were disengaged, and my grandparents were absent, and the only advice I brought forward into adulthood was to always write a thank-you note. Which is a good idea, but not exactly a north star by which to navigate.
Other friends were happy to share their advice. “When you make a decision, never look back,” said an old neighbor. This is my husband’s advice also. (I’m thinking they never found themselves ablaze following a decision to perch beside a candle at a party.)
“Always be looking ahead, setting goals while enjoying the present,” said a favorite former co-worker. This totally jives with my “never rest” philosophy, though the entreaty to “enjoy the present” at the same time seems to me like a complicated game of philosophical musical chairs: Always be on the move, but when the music stops, you’d better be sitting. I’m not sure I can do both at once.
An artist friend who designs beautiful interiors took the question in a slightly different direction, by sharing what gives her life meaning. We internalize the beauty of our surroundings, she said, which, when we go out into the world, then finds a home in others. It’s the pebble-in-thepond idea, that good will radiates outward and finds distant shores. It’s a lovely concept and a reminder that how we go out into the world matters to more than just our immediate neighbors.
If you are reading this column and would like to share your advice for living, I would love to hear it! My email address is below.
And for the record, my dogs do NOT tug at their leashes.
I definitely don’t feel ready. Sixty feels calamitous. Not surprisingly — because the world has a way of reflecting back to us whatever we are feeling — the last few weeks of my 50s were filled with calamity.