This is 50: Literary Hub EIC Jonny Diamond Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"I don’t believe age automatically grants anyone wisdom about the world (look at the terrible things done every day by old men in power). I do know it gives us opportunities to learn from mistakes."
From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”
Sometimes you’ll find responses from writers, musicians, and artists you’ve heard of—like Kate Pierson, Neko Case, Rosie O’Donnell, Ava Duvernay, Jerry Saltz, Lucy Sante, magazine legend Tom Junod, Ricki Lake, Hilma Wolitzer, Elizabeth Gilbert, Judith Viorst, Cheryl Strayed, Deesha Philyaw, Chloe Caldwell, etc.—but more often it will be people (of all ages) you haven’t heard of, Humans of New York-style. (Check out all the Oldster interviews…)
Here, long-time Men’s Wearhouse marketing mastermind, author, film producer, and more, Richard Goldman responds. -Sari Botton
PS If you’re enjoying the work I do here at Oldster, please consider supporting it by becoming a paid subscriber. 🙏
"I've really enjoyed reading Oldster Magazine. Thoughtful, always interesting perspective, and celebrating age and living." - Lisa Guarino, paid subscriber.
P.S. A reminder that as far as I’m concerned, everyone who is alive and aging is considered an Oldster, and that every contributor to this magazine is the oldest they have ever been, which is interesting new territory for them—and interesting to me, the 60-year-old who publishes Oldster. Also, I’m trying to foster intergenerational conversations in which elders learn what it’s like to be younger, and younger people learn from elders what it’s like to be older.
When you see a piece featuring someone younger than you, try to remember when you were that age and how monumental it felt. Bring some curiosity to reading about how the person being featured is experiencing that age. Or, if you prefer, wait for the next piece featuring someone in your age group. In the last few weeks alone, I’ve published pieces by people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Not every piece will speak to every reader. I’m doing my best to cover a lot of ground and be inclusive. Please work with me! Thank you. 🙏 - Sari Botton.
Jonny Diamond is a writer and editor who lives in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains with his wife Sarah and his sons, Lucian and Emrys. He is currently working on a book-length object history of the axe for W.W. Norton, and is the editor-in-chief of LitHub.com. You can follow him @diamond-jonny on Instagram.
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How old are you?
I am 50 years old as of this past January.
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
Probably 26. Years ago, a former colleague went around the room conferring “essential” ages on the entire staff where I worked—it was that kind of job, that kind of colleague—and 26 was my number (I was 38 or 39 at the time). As much as I rejected the premise of the exercise the number resonated: 26 for me was a time between the proscriptions and expectations of youth (college, etc.) and the full and real responsibilities of adulthood; out in the world alone, following my instincts—not a terrible way to be. I’d like to think I’ve remained as open to life as I was then.
Turning 50 has steered me toward valuing the possibility of each day, each week, rather than worrying too much about the possibilities of the next decade. Also, it helps to have a 2-year-old and a 15-year-old tethering you to the here and now—not a huge amount of free brain space to grapple with my mortality. Of course, I worry about the world my children will inherit, but paradoxically, I think they keep me too busy to fixate on it.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
I feel young for my age. I am married to someone younger than I am (Sarah, 14 years my junior), my colleagues at work are all younger than I am, I play soccer regularly with men younger than I am, and most of my friends are younger than I am. So perhaps I’ve surrounded myself with the illusion of my own youth.
What do you like about being your age?
While I don’t believe that age automatically grants anyone wisdom about the world (just look at all the terrible things done every day by old men in power) I do know that it at least gives us a lot of opportunities to learn from the mistakes we’ve made in life. I have made plenty of those, and on good days I allow myself to believe I’ve learned from some of them.
What is difficult about being your age?
I suppose one of the downsides of learning from your mistakes (see above) is realizing the time you lost in living through them. At my age, all illusions of an expansive and unknowable future have receded, and I have internalized the absolute finitude of this life. If one was predisposed to gloom this would be difficult—you know, death and all that—but I’m not, really.
Turning 50 has steered me toward valuing the possibility of each day, each week, rather than worrying too much about the possibilities of the next decade. Also, it helps to have a 2-year-old and a 15-year-old tethering you to the here and now—not a huge amount of free brain space to grapple with my mortality. Of course, I worry about the world my children will inherit, but paradoxically, I think they keep me too busy to fixate on it.
Realizing this is kind of a self-satisfied non-answer so I’ll add that I don’t like having to pee more at night than I used to.
I feel young for my age. I am married to someone younger than I am (Sarah, 14 years my junior), my colleagues at work are all younger than I am, I play soccer regularly with men younger than I am, and most of my friends are younger than I am. So perhaps I’ve surrounded myself with the illusion of my own youth.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
I suppose I’m surprised at how good I feel about being 50. And how good I feel in general! As milestones go, 40 was one I gave a lot of thought to, and which felt enormous; but 50 was never much of a consideration or a concern. Is this… what wisdom feels like?
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
Well, the obvious answer to the former is wrinkles, and to the latter, hair; but I think I reject the premise of the question, the idea that we deserve anything from this life, or that the passage of time is anything other than a blunt reality. Maybe it’s naive or vain or self-deluded, but aging, to me, is just life and the living of it—so in that sense aging has “given” me everything, and taken nothing. Aging is the sum of who we are.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
I think it has only served to amplify my unhealthy inclination toward competitiveness (which is a sub-trait of vanity, to be sure); so I continue to measure my physical health/aptitude against younger men (who couldn’t care less) in a way that calls to mind that Mad Men meme, the punchline of which is Don Draper saying: “I don’t think about you at all.”
What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
Well, I am years late on the nonfiction book I’ve been contracted to write, and 25-year-old me definitely thought I’d have published multiple novels by 40. So that feels really badly off-schedule for someone who internally identifies as “writer.”
I’ve now told myself that before I die I want to have published one nonfiction book (in the works), one novel (many started, many abandoned), and one collection of poetry (many written, none yet even submitted). If I’m being honest this has been the hardest part of aging, and the source of most of my regrets: living the kind of life—professionaly busy, family-focused—that has made it harder to focus solely on writing. I know that writers juggle these kinds of things all the time, but it’s been a struggle for me. (Ed. note: Tell me about it! - Sari)
On the flip side, I am more at peace now, at 50, with the kind of life I have lived, and place less internal pressure on myself about what I have and haven’t written. But in darker moments I do wonder if this is a kind of giving up…
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
Well, I was once 24, working odd jobs and wandering across Europe, before smartphones and infinite distractions (I didn’t even have a cellphone!), getting into what I will now quaintly refer to as adventures, sleeping in fields, living in squats, reading a book a day… But this is less about being 24 than it is about a moment in history that happened to line up with a moment of absolute freedom in my life (as a Canadian graduate of a Canadian university I now recognize what a privilege it was to have no student debt!). So in a way I’d rather go back to that era, relatively free of the internet, as a 50-year-old than suddenly be a 24-year-old in 2026 (no thank you).
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
This one’s easy. My dad. He was 52 when I was born, and he stayed active and curious until his death at 85. His whole life was a really terrific rebuttal to that horribly cynical and selfish old adage, “If you’re not liberal when you’re young you have no heart, and if you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no brain.” He never stopped caring about the world—and the people in it—in a very active, engaged way (and he never stopped playing tennis or riding his bike, which helped!).
I reject the idea that we deserve anything from this life, or that the passage of time is anything other than a blunt reality. Maybe it’s naive or vain or self-deluded, but aging, to me, is just life and the living of it—so in that sense aging has “given” me everything, and taken nothing. Aging is the sum of who we are.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
This is also easy. Maybe it’s the dumb math of it all, but turning 50 made it far too simple to grasp that I’ll be 70 around the time my younger son graduates from college (should he choose to go). And I’d really like to be able-bodied and nimble at the afterparty! I was already exercising a lot, but this year I’ve cut down on alcohol and junk food in a more serious way than I ever have before. I also play in a competitive over-30 soccer league, and every year some punk kid turns 30 and tries to take my spot, so I am battling against time to hang on to that… I hate to report that cutting back on booze and crappy food has made me feel much, much better.
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
Well, I’m trying to eat better, drink less, and get more sleep (so those are three really big aging-related adjustments). Are there other ones? Please tell me and I’ll do them. I just want to live a long and active life!
What turn of events had the biggest impact on your life? What took your life in a different direction, for better or worse?
Probably the death of a very close friend, Andrew, when I was 15: a tragic, sudden, very up-close event (it could just as easily have been me). To have absolute mortality mirrored to you at such an early age will obviously change you, in any number of ways. It would take much more time and space than we have here for me to articulate how his death changed me and the course of my life.
I do know that not a month has passed in the last 35 years when I haven’t thought some version of: “You’re living life for two, for a boy who never had a chance to do any of these things.” That background hum of guilt and responsibility has led, throughout my life, to saying YES to things, and trying to experience as much of this world as possible, in a full and honest way.
What is your number one regret in life? If you could do it all over again, what is the biggest thing you’d do differently?
I know it’s an unsatisfying answer, but as I wrote above, who I am today is the sum of my mistakes, my good and bad decisions. And I like who I am, and the life I’ve lived. All of the biggest mistakes I’ve made are impossible to remove from the chain of events that led to the greatest joys of my life.
Oh wait. I guess I do have an answer for this. When I was 14 I started playing with the provincial soccer team in Ontario, a great honor and a track to a highly competitive level of the sport. Around that time I also had a coach with connections to the Liverpool Football Academy, who suggested I go over to England to give that a try. At the time I also loved basketball and volleyball, and wanted to keep playing multiple sports, so I didn’t follow through on either of those soccer opportunities. I topped out as a college soccer player (and had one brief and sketchy post-college, semi-pro summer in Toronto). It’s not exactly a “regret,” because there was never any chance I would have been able to ignore the call of more bookish pursuits in favor of elite sports, but I do sometimes wonder what might have been.
This is perhaps my most stereotypical “old man thinks he could’ve been a contender” daydream.
Well, I am years late on the nonfiction book I’ve been contracted to write, and 25-year-old me definitely thought I’d have published multiple novels by 40. So that feels really badly off-schedule for someone who internally identifies as “writer.” I’ve now told myself that before I die I want to have published one nonfiction book (in the works), one novel (many started, many abandoned), and one collection of poetry (many written, none yet even submitted).
What is high up on your “bucket list?” What do you hope to achieve, attain, or plain enjoy before you die?
See above, with the three books. And I’d like to meet any grandchildren that might happen to come along—I never met any of my grandparents, who all died before I was born. I also want to live in Argentina and Japan before I die (for at least a year in each.) These last goals, I realize, are perhaps too much to ask.
Is there a piece of advice you were given, that you live by? If so, what was it, and who offered it to you?
The first three lines of Wallace Stevens’s poem, “The Well Dressed Man With a Beard,” have been rattling around my head for 30 years:
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
These lines have always meant to me that the whole wide world is there for the curious and the open-hearted, and that despite the ever-present darkness we need to seek out the small pockets of sunlight and say YES.
More tangibly—though in parallel with Stevens’s lines—I remember for years that my father, from April to September, upon returning from work, would change into his running shorts and a t-shirt and go stand against the sun-baked red brick wall of our house. When I asked him why, he explained that growing up poor in Scotland meant never being quite warm enough, and that you had to enjoy the sun’s warmth whenever you could.
So that’s a life lesson, I reckon!
What are your plans for your body when you’re done using it? Burial? Cremation? Body Farm? Other?
Cremation in the modern era has always struck me as a too-quick disappearing of the body, which leaves the living subconsciously confused about the absence of the loved one. I was a pallbearer at the funeral of Andrew, the boy who died next to me at 15, and I will never forget what it was to bear the weight of the dead, how tangible it felt in understanding the permanence of his absence.
Having said all that, I’m also not particularly interested in overburdening the living with the costs or complications of my final details. So whatever is cheapest and easiest, frankly.
My dad was 52 when I was born, and he stayed active and curious until his death at 85. His whole life was a really terrific rebuttal to that horribly cynical and selfish old adage, “If you’re not liberal when you’re young you have no heart, and if you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no brain.” He never stopped caring about the world—and the people in it—in a very active, engaged way (and he never stopped playing tennis or riding his bike, which helped!).
What do you expect to happen to your “soul” or “spirit” after you die?
I honestly don’t know! How could you! I’d like to think there’s a kind of eternity to the moment before you die, when your brain is flooded with a dense and seemingly endless loop of all the greatest and happiest moments you’ve lived through. I’ve been trying to collect these images for a long time, from my life, so they’re easier to access at the end. I’d love it if there was some further version of consciousness, mainly because I’m curious about what’s going to happen. And then what’s going to happen after that.
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
I had a biggish celebration at 50, and will probably do the same at 60, but otherwise I prefer fairly low-key evenings, with family, and maybe a few friends… (Also, a January 3rd birthday has always been a tough time to get people out of the house).
An interview with one of the people I have known since as far back as I can remember. I don’t know him as much now, but this was lovely to read. I, too, remember Andrew. And I think of him as often as you do, Jon. Thanks for getting him out there in the world again. I think he’d appreciate it.
I love the notion of collecting memories for those final ecstatic moments while you are dying. For me, 50 was a third birth. The first being my actual birth. The second birthing myself as a mother. At 50, I finally found enough relief from depression and anxiety for my life to open up to possibility and new growth, which has brought me to a still vibrant 72.