At fifty-three, I find myself in the demilitarized zone between middle age and old age. I used to think that people in their forties were over the hill; now, in retrospect, my forties were the bloom of youth. And, looming in the future, I can see hip replacements and cardiac episodes and mushy food and glasses even thicker than the ones I wear now.
One of the consolations of getting older is being able to complain about absolutely everything, and insisting that nothing is as good as it used to be. Pluto's not a planet anymore! Terrible. You don't have to put two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence any longer! Shocking. Cigarettes aren't good for you anymore! Well, we probably knew that anyway, but . . .
Oh well, ho hum, off to the nursing home, grump grump grump.
But then I find this nice Ben Franklin quote in last week's New Yorker:
“. . . Having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better Information, or fuller Consideration, to change Opinions even on important Subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”
Ben said this when he was a ripe old eighty-one.
So: let things change. It's a huge waste of energy to fret over every little thing.
We can still complain, though.
Bring on the mushy food.
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