I turned 55, and something strange happened. Suddenly 50-year-olds were saying “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am” to me. The people in the TV ads for geriatric drugs and step-in tubs were looking like me. I started mocking millennials and lamenting the absence of Chicken a la King from the grocery store. Heavens to Murgatroyd, I got old overnight.  

 In my 20s, I worked for a geezer 39 years my senior. I marveled at his warped sense of time. He’d recount a story of something from “a few years back.”  But then I’d discover it happened two decades or more earlier. He did this often. I suspected grave cognitive decline. 

Last month we had to replace our washing machine. “This washer should have lasted longer,” I griped. “We have not had it that long.” Fact: we had it for 17 years. Uh-oh. 

Illustration by Thomas Schulte

Has anyone else out there experienced this odd phenomenon? One minute you’re the youngblood, the grasshopper, the kid. The next you’re having to put on reading glasses and scroll down really, really far to highlight your birth year on an online survey. It’s a good thing I’ve always preferred old things because I have become one. 

But here’s the truly phenomenal part of all this. My body will age, but my mind and spirit can be constantly renewed. As long as I stay curious and creative, I can become younger, deeper, and more alive. It’s a matter of a made-up mind. I have decided that what remains will always be greater than what is lost.  

In my case, I had a rough start in life, but my finish is going to be golden. In the coming years I will read more than ever; listen to God more than ever; use my gifts more than ever; be in nature more than ever; and most of all, I’ll try to love people more than ever. I would vow to laugh more, but I’m already way over the legal limit in that category. 

Both of my parents died in their 60s, so I’m aware that my expiration date might be sooner than others. This just motivates me to burn red hot as long as the wick allows.  

My aim is the same as that of the late Catholic humorist Erma Bombeck.  

“When I stand before God at the end of my life,” she said. “I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”