Howdy. It’s one of those days where the stories I’ve collected are all about a theme. And today’s theme is aging. The past few years have made me acutely aware that I am no longer young. I am 54 now, and many days I feel it. But you know what? A lot of the time I feel 24.
Anyhow, these stories are all about the implications of growing older.
Dying at home. [Humble Dollar] — “For my father, the shift from living pretty well with cancer to being told he had ‘about a week to live’ was head-spinning, although it shouldn’t have been. My dad’s fallacy — and that of his four kids — had been thinking he could delay death forever. While I’d convinced him to fill out his advance directives before he had undergone a surgery a few years previously, he had engaged in little other planning or discussions.”
Believing myths about aging makes growing old worse. [Time] — “Changing your mindset toward aging has as much impact on longevity as quitting smoking, and more impact than losing weight, even if you’re obese. And this matters — a lot.”
My time machine. [Granta] — “What an amazing ability, to be able to travel through time, to inhabit the different moments of one life simultaneously, to be both then and now. We often marvel when we watch the minds of children develop, but the degenerating brain tosses out fireworks of the soul.” [I love this piece. Love love love love love. It tackles some of my favorite themes: history, time, aging, death.]
“Hello, I must be aging.” [Drezner’s World] — “I still have a lot of areas of self-improvement that merit further investment. Still, my 55 year-old self finds itself extremely grateful towards my younger self — let’s call him Past Dan. Looking back, Past Dan wound up making a lot of good decisions at a young age that have yielded enormous returns over time.”
Let’s finish things with a thirteen-minute video from the LifeHunters channel on YouTube: lire lessons from 100-year-olds.
These folks are charming. It’s lovely to listen to them talk about their lives and what they’ve learned. They’re a happy, healthy bunch.
That’s it for this week, my friends. Jim will be back with you on Monday.