robert Reich on Aging

How old is too old?. . .

In 1900, gerontologists considered “old” to be 47. Today, you are considered “youngest-old” at 65, “middle-old” at 75, and at 85, you are a member of the “oldest-old.”

I ask with some personal stake. Last week I turned 78. I feel fit, I swing dance and salsa, and I can do 20 pushups in a row. Yet I confess to a certain loss of, shall we say, fizz.  

Three score and ten is the number of years of life set out in the Bible. Modern technology and Big Pharma add at least a decade and a half. Beyond this is an extra helping.

“After 80, it’s gravy,” my father used to say. . . .

People treat you differently when you get old. An elderly friend once told me there were four ages to life: youth, middle age, old age, and “You look great.”

Where will it end? There’s only one possibility, and that reality occurs to me with increasing frequency. My mother passed at 86, my father two weeks before his 102nd birthday, so I’m hoping for the best, genetically speaking.

Yet I find myself reading the obituary pages with ever greater interest, curious about how long they lasted and what brought them down. I remember a New Yorker cartoon in which an older reader of the obituaries sees headlines that read only “Older Than Me” or “Younger Than Me.” . . .

This is an excerpt from Robert Reich’s wonderful Substack.