Lance Morrow
WSJ, July 15, 2022
“… you are not an aged monk like me. You are president of the United States. Teddy Roosevelt set an alarming standard for the office when he praised “the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.” You still up for that?”
Mr. President, if you’re sick of people talking about how old you are, think how I feel. You’re only 79. I’m 82—three years down the trail ahead of you. You’re still a kid, though it is true that, crossing the White House lawn, you walk like the Tin Woodman in need of a squirt of lubrication. Falling off the bike wasn’t a good look either. I wish you’d remember that after 75 the best hope is enigmatic dignity—elder statesman, grandfather knows best, Konrad Adenauer, that sort of thing. Think gravitas. By the way, you need a new tailor. The suits are too tight. You’re not 24.
For your eyes only, I have prepared a scouting report on conditions you will find when you cross over the mystic border of 80, into serious old age. Your timing, I must say, could be better. I note that you will turn 80 just 12 days after November’s midterm elections. Neither the landmark birthday nor the election results, I predict, will put your party in a mood to celebrate.
You will have observed that old age is a surreal phenomenon, and that time passes with accelerating speed. A year is compressed to a month. Death becomes Zeno’s paradox. The End is always there, just up ahead in the mist and dark, though you do not know exactly when or how it will come upon you. You no longer luxuriate in the youthful sense (it used to be the official American thing) that, as Thomas E. Dewey told voters in the presidential campaign of 1948, “The future lies before us!” Whatever lies before the person in his 80s, it is not exactly the future. Often what unfolds before him is precisely the reverse: the past, that interesting country, rich in its treasures and entertainments and regrets. Old age naturally prefers the past; it feels safer there.
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