Hey, everyone. I welcome this playful, light roasting of me and Oldster (and Shalom very much roasting himself)! Otherwise I wouldn't have published it. It is all in good fun. But the Oldster comments section is not to be used as an opportunity to bash Oldster, or me, or the contributors Shalom has pointed out here for their optimistic approaches to aging, which are just as valid to me as Shalom's. There's a way to say you get it without bashing people who are also my contributors, who are also part of this community. I'm going to delete any comments that do that. This is not Twitter in the 20teens. This is not that kind of comments section. Just FYI.
Fair point . I should not have been so cynical of those who have mainly achieved peace. Perhaps envy intruded .
But I had been skipping reading your posts as I found they offered nothing to me . But maybe I just haven’t read enough of them.
This one was so surprisingly relatable and refreshing that I had to comment .
Perhaps that is the real message here from all the comments. We want truer , broader , relatable stories from Oldsters not just ones that feel so unattainable to many of us. This one worked because it was both true AND funny . I like to laugh at my issues , challenges and fears not weep over them or deny them.
Thanks, Faye. In all the Questionnaires, respondents answer the question of what is difficult about being their age. There have also been many posts where people have written about *both* the difficult and the surprisingly upbeat aspects of getting older. Just last week I had a post by Ray Suarez about his experience of job discrimination after 60. Me, I am tired of being told by our culture that getting older only sucks, and diminishes me—that's the primary message out there. You can find it everywhere. I'm interested in questioning and challenging that here, and showing a broader range of experiences.
It is truly a tricky dance to achieve your aspirations (with which I totally agree) AND satisfy your audience. I respect and appreciate all your efforts.
Many friends shared and sent me Elizabeth's Oldster interview - she's so wise and wonderful - I came away feeling thoroughly sad and inadequate, and I'm in my sixth decade. So thank you Shalom for this wise and witty jolt of realism. And I'm so very sorry for your loss.
Beautiful, just beautiful thanks. I'm 60, I have Shalom days and Elizabeth days. I grieve my beautiful husband disability, I wish I had a week to say goodbye to the healthy version of himself. But I can still dance.
I love this, "Shalom days and Elizabeth days." One of my maternal grandmother's favourite bits of wisdom was "this too shall pass," and I often think that it must be the most resilient and constant truth in this life.
P.S. I would bet a whole batch of my best homemade cookies that Elizabeth has Shalom days, and Shalom has Elizabeth days (whether or not he'd admit it! 😜)
Oh Shalom! The kids these days are sex positive and much less prudish than we were. They will be giving you heavenly high fives for the porn and sex toys. Thanks for this clever essay!!
Oh that voice. This voice of Shalom. Waaay back when Foreskin’s Lament was just in galley form a copy arrived at my bookstore. A Jew. On Jews. On bad Jews. What they did to this boy. I couldn’t wait to read it. I still remember devouring that now, so many years later. It was this voice so unique and needed and he hasn’t quit yet, thank god (barouch a shem yom yom). Shalom spoke at my bookstore and, as a Jew myself, I could not have been prouder of this young man who dared to speak his truth, to tell his story. And he is still doing it. And he still thrills me, makes me laugh, makes me read his word out loud to my Goy (wonderful) husband so he can understand ME better! That’s what a memoirist does. Writes books, essays, whatever, so that the reader can make sense of their own world. I cannot wait to read Feh. Yeah. Shalom, your insecurities and vulnerabilities are shared by us all, but you know how to dig deep and serve them up for us to mull over. Thank you.
You're on to something with the 1 week warning. I have to look into making that happen. I want this for all of us. I could have done without the task of clearing out all of my father's stuff when he died. So many things about his life I DID NOT NEED TO KNOW ABOUT. Sending you tons of love and appreciation for saying the things so many of us think about and for making me spew my coffee every time I read your work. Hugs to all!
I guess on some level it was hard. It definitely answered some questions I'd been harboring for years. So glad Shalom has made an appearance on Oldster. It's almost as good as having him back here in the Hudson Valley!
Thank you … thank you … I sadly do not believe any of the peace and tranquility and everlasting serenity stories . Maybe moments … that I can believe but I am 73 and far far less at peace . Politics consume and terrify me , health issues terrify me , I worry about the environment my grandchildren will live in , I ache when I hear of immigrants dying as they risk their lives to flee to countries where they can only hope to thrive .
Yes I have joy but not at 5:30 am when cold reality lays itself bare . The true bliss stories if you believe them can only serve to make the rest of us feel like failures.
Thank you, Shalom and thank you The Oldster. Rest assured it’s not a man thing. I am a woman. I am 68. And I’m with you all the way. I seem to be hitting the existentialism of adolescence without the vista of the future rolling out before me with all its delicious temptations.
A perfect ode to neuroticism—this could maybe even stand in for the definition of neuroticism (which is oddly homophonic with eroticism). If all our bad habits catch up to us when we’re dead, does it even matter?
Who hasn’t both wished and worried their children will read their journals posthumously? Freud said, “Every dream contains a hidden wish and a hidden fear.” When you’re a neurotic Jew, every daydream does, too.
I think the correct word is “expresses” not “contains.” I’ve said it a hundred times over the years. I love dream analysis and it checks out that you can look for the hidden wish and the hidden fear expressed in a dream. *When they’re the SAME, it’s surprising!*
Oh, good, I’m not alone. I’ve passed through the 50’s decade so I’m less confident that I’ll be here tomorrow. A not insignificant chunk of time gets dedicated each day to tidying up things, shredding stuff, updating password lists, keeping documents current but the one thing that is a huge, wild, untamed mess is my iTunes. I’m sure when they finally get to that, having raced through the other things that have been properly filed in an orderly fashion, they will be shocked to find out they never really knew me!
My thoughts exactly and then I realize I’m 20 years older than this guy and I should be feeling even worse, and that I need more than a damn week and what am I waiting for?
Time to "...burn all our notebooks and to go through all our unread books, one by one, and fake dog-ear them and underline bits so people will think we’ve read them" 😆
Oh my god, thank you for this. For the laughs, for the companionship, and to Sari for sharing it here. Don't worry, you have plenty of company, including me.
I'm off to buy copies of your books. I can't wait to spend more time with your writing. THANK YOU!!
Thank you, Shalom Auslander, for that refreshing take on old age. I'm 83, which is true old age, and I'm wise, happy and at peace with myself and the world. Unfortunately, I'm also senile.
Thank you! I found myself cheering as I read your piece. That tension between how it really is and how it seems it should be is as real as it ever gets.
Hey, everyone. I welcome this playful, light roasting of me and Oldster (and Shalom very much roasting himself)! Otherwise I wouldn't have published it. It is all in good fun. But the Oldster comments section is not to be used as an opportunity to bash Oldster, or me, or the contributors Shalom has pointed out here for their optimistic approaches to aging, which are just as valid to me as Shalom's. There's a way to say you get it without bashing people who are also my contributors, who are also part of this community. I'm going to delete any comments that do that. This is not Twitter in the 20teens. This is not that kind of comments section. Just FYI.
Fair point . I should not have been so cynical of those who have mainly achieved peace. Perhaps envy intruded .
But I had been skipping reading your posts as I found they offered nothing to me . But maybe I just haven’t read enough of them.
This one was so surprisingly relatable and refreshing that I had to comment .
Perhaps that is the real message here from all the comments. We want truer , broader , relatable stories from Oldsters not just ones that feel so unattainable to many of us. This one worked because it was both true AND funny . I like to laugh at my issues , challenges and fears not weep over them or deny them.
Thanks for the reminder to respect others.
Thanks, Faye. In all the Questionnaires, respondents answer the question of what is difficult about being their age. There have also been many posts where people have written about *both* the difficult and the surprisingly upbeat aspects of getting older. Just last week I had a post by Ray Suarez about his experience of job discrimination after 60. Me, I am tired of being told by our culture that getting older only sucks, and diminishes me—that's the primary message out there. You can find it everywhere. I'm interested in questioning and challenging that here, and showing a broader range of experiences.
It is truly a tricky dance to achieve your aspirations (with which I totally agree) AND satisfy your audience. I respect and appreciate all your efforts.
Oh yes I was told Old ladies should no better in the middle of Macdonalds of all places
What kinda troll would attack this wise site? And doesn't Shalom mean peace? : )
Obviously, considering the childhood they gave me, they were being sarcastic.
ROFL. So, trolling parents is copacetic? Good to know. 😛
<3
Many friends shared and sent me Elizabeth's Oldster interview - she's so wise and wonderful - I came away feeling thoroughly sad and inadequate, and I'm in my sixth decade. So thank you Shalom for this wise and witty jolt of realism. And I'm so very sorry for your loss.
Beautiful, just beautiful thanks. I'm 60, I have Shalom days and Elizabeth days. I grieve my beautiful husband disability, I wish I had a week to say goodbye to the healthy version of himself. But I can still dance.
I love this, "Shalom days and Elizabeth days." One of my maternal grandmother's favourite bits of wisdom was "this too shall pass," and I often think that it must be the most resilient and constant truth in this life.
P.S. I would bet a whole batch of my best homemade cookies that Elizabeth has Shalom days, and Shalom has Elizabeth days (whether or not he'd admit it! 😜)
I definitely do have Elizabeth days. But I live in LA, where pot's legal.
Try the shrooms if you haven't already😉
Shalom, Shalom.
If I must, I must.
Oh Shalom! The kids these days are sex positive and much less prudish than we were. They will be giving you heavenly high fives for the porn and sex toys. Thanks for this clever essay!!
Oh that voice. This voice of Shalom. Waaay back when Foreskin’s Lament was just in galley form a copy arrived at my bookstore. A Jew. On Jews. On bad Jews. What they did to this boy. I couldn’t wait to read it. I still remember devouring that now, so many years later. It was this voice so unique and needed and he hasn’t quit yet, thank god (barouch a shem yom yom). Shalom spoke at my bookstore and, as a Jew myself, I could not have been prouder of this young man who dared to speak his truth, to tell his story. And he is still doing it. And he still thrills me, makes me laugh, makes me read his word out loud to my Goy (wonderful) husband so he can understand ME better! That’s what a memoirist does. Writes books, essays, whatever, so that the reader can make sense of their own world. I cannot wait to read Feh. Yeah. Shalom, your insecurities and vulnerabilities are shared by us all, but you know how to dig deep and serve them up for us to mull over. Thank you.
You're on to something with the 1 week warning. I have to look into making that happen. I want this for all of us. I could have done without the task of clearing out all of my father's stuff when he died. So many things about his life I DID NOT NEED TO KNOW ABOUT. Sending you tons of love and appreciation for saying the things so many of us think about and for making me spew my coffee every time I read your work. Hugs to all!
Oh, that sounds like it was hard. <3
I guess on some level it was hard. It definitely answered some questions I'd been harboring for years. So glad Shalom has made an appearance on Oldster. It's almost as good as having him back here in the Hudson Valley!
Similar situation with father-in-law...won't go into details but all I can say is I completely relate!
Thank you … thank you … I sadly do not believe any of the peace and tranquility and everlasting serenity stories . Maybe moments … that I can believe but I am 73 and far far less at peace . Politics consume and terrify me , health issues terrify me , I worry about the environment my grandchildren will live in , I ache when I hear of immigrants dying as they risk their lives to flee to countries where they can only hope to thrive .
Yes I have joy but not at 5:30 am when cold reality lays itself bare . The true bliss stories if you believe them can only serve to make the rest of us feel like failures.
I am going to clean out my files.
Thank you, Shalom and thank you The Oldster. Rest assured it’s not a man thing. I am a woman. I am 68. And I’m with you all the way. I seem to be hitting the existentialism of adolescence without the vista of the future rolling out before me with all its delicious temptations.
I'm hoping its just the adolescence of my existence - another fifty years I'll be as wise as an owl.
A perfect ode to neuroticism—this could maybe even stand in for the definition of neuroticism (which is oddly homophonic with eroticism). If all our bad habits catch up to us when we’re dead, does it even matter?
Who hasn’t both wished and worried their children will read their journals posthumously? Freud said, “Every dream contains a hidden wish and a hidden fear.” When you’re a neurotic Jew, every daydream does, too.
Liking and sharing this ✅✅
I've never heard that quote before. Spot on.
I think the correct word is “expresses” not “contains.” I’ve said it a hundred times over the years. I love dream analysis and it checks out that you can look for the hidden wish and the hidden fear expressed in a dream. *When they’re the SAME, it’s surprising!*
I love this essay. Thank you for your honesty. An older oldster than you, I am still awaiting my wisdom and total self-acceptance.
Oh, good, I’m not alone. I’ve passed through the 50’s decade so I’m less confident that I’ll be here tomorrow. A not insignificant chunk of time gets dedicated each day to tidying up things, shredding stuff, updating password lists, keeping documents current but the one thing that is a huge, wild, untamed mess is my iTunes. I’m sure when they finally get to that, having raced through the other things that have been properly filed in an orderly fashion, they will be shocked to find out they never really knew me!
My thoughts exactly and then I realize I’m 20 years older than this guy and I should be feeling even worse, and that I need more than a damn week and what am I waiting for?
Time to "...burn all our notebooks and to go through all our unread books, one by one, and fake dog-ear them and underline bits so people will think we’ve read them" 😆
Oh my god, thank you for this. For the laughs, for the companionship, and to Sari for sharing it here. Don't worry, you have plenty of company, including me.
I'm off to buy copies of your books. I can't wait to spend more time with your writing. THANK YOU!!
Thank you, Shalom Auslander, for that refreshing take on old age. I'm 83, which is true old age, and I'm wise, happy and at peace with myself and the world. Unfortunately, I'm also senile.
You, sir, are a God.
A refreshing, non delusional take. This is the stuff to read first thing in the morning! Reality. Check!
Thank you! I found myself cheering as I read your piece. That tension between how it really is and how it seems it should be is as real as it ever gets.