WaPo Op-Ed: Invisible And Exposed — But Adaptable, As Only The Old Can Be

Washington Post Op-Ed:  Invisible and Exposed — But Adaptable, As Only the Old Can Be, by Anne Lamott (Author, Somehow: Thoughts on Love (2024)):

Anyone who survived eighth-grade gym class believes that the worst is over, that it will all be downhill from that peak of vulnerability and mortification.

And then you get old.

For decades, the focused attention on raising families and/or yourself, all that competitive hustle, strive and fixation with appearances, provides a kind of carapace. You were always as vulnerable as kittens, but you could ignore it in your big-girl-in-charge years. Then, one day, you wake up and find yourself simultaneously invisible and exposed again. Maybe you’re not standing there in the locker room in your underpants, but you’re equally revealed to the world’s harsh, arrogant eyes.

Eyes? Did someone mention eyes? I had made peace with the decline of my eyes — the weakening vision, the saggy eyelids’ hostile takeover of the eyeball, the eight remaining lashes — until two years ago, when dry eye appeared. Dry eye in my case has meant symptoms too repulsive to go into here. ...

The superpower my older friends and I share is that we have learned to adapt to changing circumstances, like England’s peppered moths that, during the Industrial Age, darkened in tandem with the arrival of soot. My colleagues and I gladly adapted to bifocals, hearing aids, Depends, custom orthotics — whatever we needed to keep our standard of living as high as possible. (My husband and I thought of registering for wedding gifts at the local Jack’s Durable Medical Equipment and Pharmacy.) We’ve learned to adjust when things go wrong, rather than try to control things. How do we know things will go wrong? Because that is the nature of life. ...

On planes, a voice always reminds us that, if the lights go out, path lights will come on to guide us. What are the path lights when life does not work?

You just can’t go wrong with deep breaths. Us praying people pray — I say in silence, “I currently hate everything about life so please help me. Have at it, Pal. Amen.” After doing that, I made a gratitude list — this was dry eye, not third stage ocular melanoma. Also, no hairy spiders nearby.

Other op-eds by Anne Lamott:

• The Dressing Room Encounter That Made Me Get Real About Aging (June 2, 2024)
• Lifelong Lessons In Coping With Fear And Humiliation (May 19, 2024)
• It’s Not So ‘Terribly Strange To Be 70’ (Apr. 21, 2024)
• The Two Best Gifts Of Aging? Softness And Illumination.  (Mar. 17, 2024)
• A Superpower of Older Age: Powerlessness (Mar. 3, 2024)
• Age Makes The Miracles Easier To See (Jan. 28, 2024)
• At 33, I Knew Everything. At 69, I Know Something Much More Important (Nov. 26, 2023)
• It’s Good to Remember: We Are All On Borrowed Time (Nov. 3, 2023)
• I Pray. But I Don’t Want To See A High School Football Coach Praying At The 50-Yard Line. (July 10, 2022)

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