On Wednesday I will turn 72. My students have trouble grasping that. I am older than most of their grandparents, and yet in their eyes I seem about as old as their parents. And yet in many ways I know age is catching up with me.
I am by background primarily musical. I taught myself to read music at the same time I taught myself to read English, when I was three. When I was young many people thought I might become a professional musician, and during my 7+ decades there have been times when all or part of my income depended upon my musical abilities — it was my military specialty, I’ve played in rock bands, cocktail groups, been a piano player in bars and restaurants, directed a capella church choirs, did musical direction for musical theater. Now I rarely touch a keyboard, and have not owned either a cello or a guitar for at least three decades.
But now I feel sympathy with Beethoven, who by the time he wrote his 3rd Symphony already knew he was going deaf,and who composed some of his greatest music when he could only hear it in his mind. My hearing is starting to fade.
It is not yet at the point where I cannot hear music, including its subleties, through earphones, or on the rare occasion where I am at a live venue.
And yet, it is clear it is happening. I often now have to ask students to repeat things, to move closer to them.
And that is not all….
For years I have been able to push myself physically. For much of my teaching career, now spanning more than two decades, I have been able to function on 5 hours of sleep during the week, M-TH nights. Now if I get less than 6,5, I am wiped out. In fact, I really need closer to 7.5 to be fully functional without collapsing at the end of the school day.
It is one reason I do not post here as frequently as I did in the past. I used to get up at 4 in the morning, and have at least an hour to write before leaving for school. Now if I get up that early my mind is not functioning as acutely as it needs to be to write as cogently as I might like.
I used to read at least one non-fiction book per week, sometimes several. Often I would write about what I had read. Now? I have a stack of books about which I had expected to write after reading that have yet to crack open.
Life also reminds me that I am getting older in ways that are not so pleasant and have serious consequences.
Health issues occur more frequently. I have had to have surgeries twice in the past 19 months. One laid me up for basically a month, and meant I was unemployable for more than half of a school year The other was minor, and relieved some major discomfort at the cost of only missing 3 days of work. Still, after that experience I cannot help but wonder what might be next.
And then there is the impact upon employment/income. Technically it is illegal to discriminate against someone applying for a job because of their age, but it happens all the time. Recently I had the experience of a head of an independent school who was otherwise quite interested in me raise two issues, the first of which was that he was hoping to fill the position for which I was applying on a long-term basis, and he questioned whether at 72 I would be able to do that. I also recently had the experience of another independent school where the person to whom I lost the position was 30 years younger than me. My wife thinks I should stay silent about my age, but any examination of transcripts will show I began college in 1963, and any explanation of my work experience in the past decades requires me to disclose that I retired in 2012. Besides, I am not inclined to dissemble, not wishing to waste their time or mine if my age is going to eventually be a stumbling block.
I know I am still mentally sharp, although I also recognize that I am somewhat more forgetful of minor details of life, such as what I did with my keys! That I can and do address by becoming somewhat more systematic in day to day behaviors.
Why is this relevant on a political blog?
Well for starters, I am older than the past four Presidents. The last older than me was the first Bush. Obviously Obama is significantly younger than I am. Clinton, the younger Bush, and Trump were, like me, all born in 1946, albeit after my date of May 23. As stressful as teaching can be — and trust me, it can be very much so — it does not compare to the stress of being President, that is, if one is really going to do the job.
I look at figures in the various branches of our government, some older than me — the Democratic House leadership, Justices on the Supreme Court — and I wonder if part of what is wrong is that too many are out of touch with the world in which many of us live. They have privileged lives — decent incomes, access to medical care, staff to address many of the things that consume much of the time and energy of the rest of us. They seem in many cases to lack knowledge of the impact technology has had on the lives of those significantly younger, and too often they are totally oblivious to the impact of laws, policies, and judicial decisions upon the reality of life for many Americans.
Especially given some of the age discrimination I now experience, I am not inclined to impose hard and fast maximum age tests for those I am willing to support for political leadership and public office. I am increasingly inclined to tilt in favor of those significantly younger than my own septuagenarian status.
I also wish to see a greater diversity not merely of race and gender and religion and national origin. I want to see a greater diversity of life experience.
Here I look to the Supreme Court. The vast majority of Justices in the past few decades have come from a relatively small slice of the legal profession, with almost all coming directly from the Federal Appellate bench. Very few have ever tried a case before a Jury, or sat as a trial judge. Since the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor none has held elective office. I think back to the Warren Court and immediately remember that Earl Warren had been a VP candidate and a state attorney general, that Hugo Black had been a United States Senator. I wonder what that breadth of experience had upon what they did on SCOTUS. Similarly, I know that Thurgood Marshall was able to persuade some of his colleagues based on his experince as a Black lawyer working in a time when overt discrimination was both common and fully legal.
I am old, part the leading edge of the baby boomers. I graduated from high school when I was 17 in 1963. This year should have been our 55th reunion, but as I commented at our 50th, that was probably the last time we would gather as a class. Too many of us are infirm, dying, or have already passed on. At the 50th reunion of my original class at Haverford last May we had a memorial service for those who had passed. If I recall correctly we went at least 30 years before we lost anyone of whom we know, even though several dozen of the 130+ in the class served in Vietnam (some were wounded, some were traumatized in other ways).
Having lived through my own health issues, and continuing to live with my wife’s blood cancer has contributed to my being reflective.
While we have no biological children, my wife is a doting aunt to three each of nephews and nieces. I maintain some connection with hundreds of the several thousand young people who have passed through my classrooms.
I have lived through momentous times in our history. As a child I was patted on the head by Babe Ruth several months before he died. My first TV memories were the Army McCarthy hearings. My life has encompassed the Civil Rights movement, the gay rights movement. Vietnam, Watergate, Iran Contra, 9-11, and so much more. People I know/knew have been murdered, have gone to prison, have held high public office in local, state, and national office (here I refer to those I knew before they became political figures- living as I do near Washington DC and being very politically active and through Daily Kos and Netroots Nation and its predecessor I have gotten to many more who were already political figures, holding or running for office). Some with whom I grew up and/or attended college or encountered elsewhere have been successful in entertainment, professional sports, business, academia. Some died on 9-11. All that is part of a life of more than 7 decades, much of it spent in circles of the White upper middle class background of privilege that has shaped much of my life’s experience.
But there are also those with whom I served in the Marines whose names on engraved on a black marble wall only a few miles from where I now sit.
There was a policeman whom I got to know when I first taught, decades ago in Moorestown NJ, who died when he walked into a bank robbery.
I am old.
I have experienced many things.
I do not know what value my experience and insight might have for others. That is ultimately for them to decide.
I only know that it is a motivation for me to keep teaching if I can still do so with integrity.
It is a motivation from much of the writing I do, including this piece.
Today is Sunday, or as we Quakers say, First Day. In about an hour I will head into our Meeting House for Meeting for Worship. Perhaps some will be moved to offer verbal messages. Perhaps we will sit for an hour in shared silence, a silence that is often thunderous in its depth.
Later today I will plan lessons for the four days of classes this week (Friday is graduation, so our school is closed).
Later today I will also apply to several more job openings, pay some bills, do some household tasks. Life goes on, even as one ages.
I will listen to some music. I still can..
And as I often do, I will take some time to ponder — what my life has meant, what meaning and purpose it can have going forward.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment or not.
Peace.