As I grow older, I spend more and more time thinking about time itself. How it flows (ever faster!), how it feels (slow on a daily basis, while whole months seem to evaporate behind me), and perhaps most importantly: how best to spend it.

Two of my favorite ways to spend time, reading books and watching movies, sometimes compete for my attention. After all, at my age, it’s hard to knock out a few chapters and a whole movie after dinner without dozing off. And to be fair, I’ve already seen a lot of movies and read a lot of books! This means both that a) I’ve already enjoyed so many of the surefire winners, and b) my tastes are pretty refined and probably even a bit jaded. It takes a bit more to impress me after decades of consumption.

With these two competing impulses in mind, I’ve grown a lot more protective of my time, but also a lot more merciless in how I recommend other people spend their time. I may have a pathological need to finish books I start, mainly so I can render a fully informed and absolute verdict on then, but that is only so that I can say with confidence: DON’T BOTHER. For example: I, English teacher that I am, can confidently say that Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment was absolutely not worth the time it took to read. It’s a classic for a reason, with some fascinating moral questions to ponder and a complex central character. It’s also somehow simultaneously dull and melodramatic, and by even century-old standards, needs to be edited by about half. It’s what I’d hold up as a shining example of why we should re-evaluate the canon and find more modern examples of stories that cover similar intellectual ground if we want people to actually embrace and enjoy reading. It’s just… a slog. I’m sorry, Fyodor! I’m not saying your work has no cultural value; just that for 99% of currently living humans, this is a use of time that I simply cannot condone. And honestly, haven’t 99% of previous humans likely lived ok-to-great lives having never read it already? I’m only suggesting we present breathers not feel bad about it.

And yet… I am also reassured that no matter how much time I’ve spent on this earth, there are absolute gems of modern art that I’ve yet to discover. The best, most recent example of which is the film Master and Commander: Far Side of the World. Despite it’s unwieldy title, it is a perfect film. The period-accurate, creaky and grimy production details of this ship at sea are incredible. The cast delivers at every level from Russel Crowe as a charismatic captain down to the little pre-teen aspiring naval officer on his first journey at sea. It swings from tense and explosive action to jovial wartime camaraderie, with time to spare for philosophical asides about discovery, duty, friendship, and more. What a time! And to think, I’d shared a planet with this masterwork (pun) for over two decades and never experienced it. What a world.

I could say similar things about other movies like Charade (Hepburn and Grant?!) or Lone Star (Cooper, wow!), or Richard Powers’ Bewilderment (I could just die after finishing that one) etc., all of which are a hell of a lot more worth your time than trying to check the box on a supposed centuries-old classic. It’s not that old things are not worth our time, it’s that as we get old, our time is worth more than some slightly less wonderful old things! Tough calls have to be made, and sometimes obligations to a cultural canon must be sacrificed in favor of savoring the recently delicious. Bon Appétit!

So…
What’s an example of something you’d neglected for years, but upon finally catching, still took you by surprise with its greatness?

Conversely, what’s something you felt some cultural or peer pressure to appreciate, but upon finally experiencing, you can confidently say live up to its reputation and is better skipped?

In light of these examples, is this a reasonable way to think of using one’s time? Or is this approach a surefire path to cultural bankruptcy where we simply stop trying to appreciate difficult or less enjoyable art while sliding comfortably into brainless bliss?

As a rapidly aging fellow, of course I am naturally drawn to any shred of evidence that my best years are not, in fact, behind me. This thoughtful Atlantic article about late bloomers includes plenty of anecdotal evidence of people who peaked late, not early, which is some small comfort. However, after the initial dopamine hit of potentially not being washed wore off, there were even deeper insights to enjoy, like this great quote:

We have a notion that the happiest people are those who have aimed their life toward some goal and then attained it, like winning a championship trophy or achieving renown. But the best moments of life can be found within the lifelong learning or quest itself. It’s doing something so fulfilling that the work is its own reward. “Effort is the one thing that gives meaning to life,” the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck once wrote. “Effort means you care about something.”

That gives hope to us olds, almost-olds, or seriously-olds! Because that means as long as there is an ounce of life left, that’s a scoop of effort left to put toward something worthwhile.

So…
What have pursuits or goals have you put the most effort toward in the last year? Or in your life as a whole?

If you could take back some of that effort and reassign it to something else, what would you choose? Why did you make that original choice, and why would you change it?

What would you love to spend more effort on in the future that you aren’t already?

Part of my recent love affair with newsletters includes the discovery of Blackbird Spyplane, a weekly update on fashion, style, and living a beautiful life that includes the occasional interview with a stylish and cool person. And sometimes, they get pretty deep on what it means to be an ethical consumer, too, like in the recent post You Are Not A Commercial For Yourself. (You really should RTFA (read the full article), it’s super worthwhile.)

Using an Ozu film as a jumping off point (see? they’re cool folks), the post explores the tension between chasing trends and coolness versus the genuine pleasure and affirming qualities of dressing well and feeling confident.

Sure, sick clothes can be a superficial object of vacuous consumerism and ego-affirmation. But sick clothes also affirm the creative ingenuity and labor of the people who made the fly s**t, weaving us into a social relationship predicated, at bottom, on celebrating and sharing what’s best and most beautiful about human creativity.
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Where things get muddy is when our healthy desire for beautiful man-made things — intimately connected to our healthy desire for connectedness & community — gets hijacked and zombiefied by manipulative, profit-hungry, fundamentally anti-social souls…
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Remember that buying s**t is not the same as having swag … Remember that having cool interests beyond cool clothes, and doing good deeds besides putting together sick outfits (which, to be clear, is a good deed), will make your clothes look better on you… Remember that you don’t even need to own things to feast upon their beauty. “Sight is sensory, after all,” Rothfeld writes, “and voyeurism can be voluptuous.”

And remember that a ravenous desire for cool clothes is tight so long as you keep it “gourmand” mode and avoid slipping into “glutton” mode, where, in the throes of a boundless acquisitive frenzy, you keep shoving food down your face without even tasting it, without thinking about how it got on your plate — without ever stopping to consider whether you’re enjoying it or not.

Which puts me very much in the mind of how far I’ve come in terms of choosing clothes with intention to fill needs or color palettes I’m looking for in dressing like myself, versus trying to mimic trends. After all, the looser clothes I grew up with are very much back in style. Plus, I care much more about spending more on longer-lasting, higher-quality articles of clothing versus acquisition of any kind. So…

How has your “style” changed with age, for better or for worse?

Are you “cooler” or “less cool” now than you were when you were younger? In what ways?

How have these evolutions changed your relationship to the clothing you own, wear, and shop for?

Pro-tip: party with people who also love cleaning up at 7am.

This article on a Margaritaville-themed retirement community makes for an easy-to-smirk-at headline, but raises a lot of interesting questions if you bother clicking through. We’re about to have a massive aging population who aren’t going to quietly get consigned to traditional senior living. Our whole conception of seniors and their role in society — especially as they live longer and longer — is weird and undefined and in flux.

But on the matter of themed retirement communities this… actually sounds kinda fun? And even for those of us who have no particular fondness for Jimmy Buffet, it’s useful to think of what’s really important as we age and what the ideal scenario in which to spend our golden years might be.

What would your ideal retirement community look like?

What kind of space, what kind of people, what kind of activities would make your later years the most enjoyable? Where would it be? What would its theme or name be?

Also dinners. If you can’t agree on where to go to dinner, just quit now.

Whenever there is another news story (like this one) about how we’re inching ever closer to discovering the secret of “defeating death” or “reversing aging”, the easy immediate reaction is “whoa, cool, I can be immortal!”.

Leaving aside the fact that I personally think that sounds terrible (discuss!), the follow-up thoughts are a lot more interesting. Even if people don’t stop dying completely, and just lived much, much longer than they already do, there would be tons of repercussions for society. Economic, environmental, social.

For now let’s focus on one: relationships.

Conventional wisdom says that as life has extended, marriage in particular has been forced to change; that when life expectancy was shorter, it was more attainable to have a healthy relationship for twenty to forty years, but as people live much longer, can any one partnership possibly be expected to sustain itself for sixty, or a hundred?

And if we shift expectations that life will almost certainly extend a hundred years (or two hundred, or more!), it seems likely that our expectations on how any one relationship could last that long will have to shift too.

In a world where people live twice as long, how do the parameters of long-term relationships have to change to accommodate?

Would people still try to partner up and stay together “til death do us part”?

Shift into more open ongoing relationships with multiple partners?

Accept that a series of long-term but non-permanent relationships can be satisfying for all involved?

Or do we just give up marriage all together?