The View from Eighty
Even before he or she is 80, the aging person may undergo another identity crisis like that of adolescence. Perhaps there had also been a middle-aged crisis, the male or the female menopause, but for the rest of adult life he had taken himself for granted, with his capabilities and failings. Now, in his new makeup he is called upon to play a new role in a play that must be improvised.
yearn
In his new role the old person will find that he is tempted by new vices, that he receives new compensations (not so widely known), and that he may possibly achieve new virtues. Among the vices of age are avarice, untidiness, and vanity, which last takes the from of a craving to be loved or simply admired.
Avarice is the most of those three. They eat the cheapest food, buy no clothes, and live in a single room when they could afford better lodging. I suppose that the pilling up is partly from lethargy and partly from the feeling that everything once useful, including their own bodies, should be preserved.
The vanity of older people is an easier weakness to explain, and to condone. With less to look forward to, they yearn for recognition of what they have been: the reigning beauty, the athlete, the soldier, the scholar. It is the beauties who have the hardest time. Often the yearning to be recognized appears in conversation as an innocent boast. To be admired and praised, especially by the young, is an autumnal pleasure enjoyed by the lucky ones (who are not always the most deserving). But there are also pleasures of the body, or the mind, that are enjoyed by a greater number of older persons.
Not whiskey or cooking sherry but simply giving up is the greatest temptation of age. It is something different from a stoical acceptation of infirmities, which is something to be admired. The givers-up see no reason for working. Sometimes they lie in bed all day when moving about would still be possible, if difficult. I have not the right to blame those who surrender, not being able to put myself inside their minds or bodies. For such persons, every new infirmity is an enemy to be outwitted, an obstacle to be overcome by force or will. They enjoy each little victory over themselv
es, and sometimes they win a major success.

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