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This Just In! |
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 Outrageous Associations |
| To be an older man in our society, which is given
to the premise that youth is everything, is to know the meaning of considerable challenge.
Yet being an older man gives you the opportunity to wear your years well, to feel the
pride of being a tribal elder, a successful ager, someone who has lived and erred, but
also someone who has contributed, and made our earth-station a better place. Being an
older man in this day and age means having the opportunity to experience a range of
positive emotions and feelings--the pride of being a loyal friend, a good husband, a good
father, and, if you are blessed, a loving grandfather. To be an older man in our society is to accept that you are a work in progress. Understand that you have years to go, and that not all your days will be good ones, but most will. Understand that you cannot slack off, or abdicate, or shrink from this challenge. Your family and friends need you because your experience and wisdom are in too short supply. Your community--your nation, needs you and your achievements, whether or not it is willing to make that connection.
Permit me to offer an example. In 1982 I set out to be the Ann Landers of the Graying Set. I wanted to write a widely-circulated, syndicated column. My subject: aging. I hoped that 400 newspapers would carry my column. I told my doubting friends, "Hey, I want to get paid for growing older." Today I joke about "being paid so little for a job so difficult." The truth is the column idea was an outrageous idea, one that took me two years to sell to the Chicago Tribune group, Tribune Media Services. But that's beside the point because the column has brought professional satisfaction and untold joy, principally from new friends: responsive readers who write me from Poughkeepsie, NY, Hackensack and Atlantic City, NJ, Modesto, CA, Tucson, AZ, suburban Chicago, Melbourne, FL, and Pittsburgh, PA. "In Your Prime," as the column is called, runs in some 45 papers and although the money would be pocket change to Ms. Landers, the giver of advice, I no longer care about profits. For I have a front-row seat on the world of aging. My true reward comes in knowledge and from the rich dialogue I carry on with my readership, including some very outrageous guys and gals. Nick and Gina Ellena of Oroville, CA, are two of these folks. Thirty years ago, Gina Ellena served in the Peace Corps, and was assigned to Nepal. When they were both in their sixties, the couple decided to return there. Nick, an amateur mountain climber, told me in a letter of how they survived monsoons, leeches, rain-swollen streams, and near-drowning: "It was a little bit of an adventure, a spectacular trip with great scenery... and we managed to see Mt. Everest. What an astonishingly huge, and imposing creation it is." After I read the letter from the Ellenas, I telephoned their house and learned that Nick, then 68 and a survivor of surgery for prostate cancer, was away at the gymnasium. "He's on the Stairmaster," Gina said. "He wants to climb to the base camp at the north side of Everest, and of course I support him in that wish." "It's not all that high," Nick later told me. "It's only about 18,000 feet, and then you drop down to the camp. You get to see Everest, and to hear those avalanches. That would be a real adventure." Nick Ellena: one more male approaching a seventieth birthday with big plans for the future. He dreams out loud about a trip halfway around the world to a small, isolated country where, $4,000 and a pocketful of leeches later, he can stand in awe at the base of one of the world's natural wonders. To my way of thinking, this Californian, who was born in the Bronx, makes a valid point. Our seniority is the right time for us men to climb a mountain, to correct wrongs, to plant a tree (or a forest), to sign an organ donor card that could assure a new start for someone in need. It's also the perfect time to launch an adventure, to travel to Central America to see butterflies, or Africa to photograph the elephants. It's the best time to repair a frayed relationship, to learn a new skill, to take up a musical instrument, to be someone very different, to reach out to a troubled youngster, and become his (or her) mentor. You can even wear your cap backwards. You cannot, you must not kick back and play the role of some older man serving out his time in God's earthly waiting room. "Lots of people my age are sitting in Florida, and I could be one of them. I've earned it," the late Dr. George Sheehan wrote when he was in his 70s. "But I can go on because I feel I've never achieved what I could. If you take less than that view, you're finished." Sheehan was a cardiologist, then a writer, lecturer, distance runner, and philosopher, who wrote eloquently to millions of Americans for some thirty years on the matter of running and being. George Sheehan, remarked one of his readers, "called us out to play." I too am urging that you come out and play. Play your game, whatever form or structure it takes. Play it hard, play it to the best of your ability and, please, play it outrageously. This injunction to turn a corner, to plow a new furrow, to push against the envelope is made, sincerely, with your interests at heart. With medical science to back me up, I assure you that you will age better, and perhaps live longer, even as you win the admiration of friends and family, if you chart a new course and then set sail. |
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Home | Excerpts
from Be Outrageous | Purchase Be Outrageous | What Others Are Saying |
It is the
purpose of this opening essay to persuade you that, whatever your age --50, 60, 70 or
beyond-- it is time you confront these new challenges, and understand and accept that
growing older is neither an aberration nor an abomination. Instead, it is your gift, your
opportunity for a second life, a time in which you have license to be different,
non-conformist, yes, even outrageous.