WaPo Op-Ed: Gentle Is The Joy That Comes With Age

Washington Post Op-Ed:  Gentle is the Joy That Comes With Age, by Anne Lamott (Author, Somehow: Thoughts on Love (2024)):

Some of my much older friends have 10 doctors or more, like an overeducated friend community. I have only six so far. But time lurches on and the reality is that, before too long, I will have 10, as well. Until then, the point of life is gratitude, modest miseries aside. And gratitude is joy. ...

To a great degree, in older age, ambition falls away. Such a relief. Appreciation and surprise bloom many mornings: Yay — I like it here.

We more easily accept the world as is, even as we doggedly keep trying to save it, like aging Smurfs. A man who got sober with me in 1986 said he had come into recovery a big shot, but the guys had helped him work his way up to servant, and he had finally found happiness.

We take it slower, and thus can be amused by the foibles of humanity around us, even as we are alarmed by how quickly the days we have speed by. ...

I’m not loving the cognitive decline, which can be so scary at the time but (for me, in the early throes) still ends up being sort of funny. ...

Older joy is not so much about chasing down things, as it is about what seizes the eye, out the window or on a walk. Older joy is less caffeinated. When you are younger, joy is photographable, for display on the curated Facebook life. Younger joy means endorphins. Older joy feels more like contentment. Someone at my church once said that peace is joy at rest and joy is peace on its feet.

Older age can be a balancing act — how much to put out, how hard to try, how much to let go. And if things aren’t working, how to accept that with grace. ...

I have always been lifted by the bulbs we planted in winter’s cold rocky soil, breaking through hilariously bright and fresh. But I’m so moved now by aged trees, like some nearby old English walnuts. They do their thing for a couple of glorious months a year, loaded with white blossoms, made to make seeds to make more trees. Then they’ve had it. They get old — no need to put makeup on those wrinkled petals any longer. They fade and fall to the ground for the year. But oh, the beauty of old beings, old trees and old us. We made it through. We did our work. And if I’m here in the joy of next spring, I’ll love them again.

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Other op-eds by Anne Lamott:

• Invisible And Exposed — But Adaptable, As Only The Old Can Be (June 9, 2024)
• 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)