Living For My 75 Year Old Self
Every spring, I meet someone new. She arrives right on schedule, always a year older than me. She informs me we’re friends, but I tell her she just feels like a familiar stranger. I didn’t know how to let her in for a long time.
It took me 25 years to begin befriending myself and my many versions, to realize that each passing year brings not just age but a new companion. In the depths of my despair, I realized we needed each other. These annual friends offer me patience, softness, and more knowing. In return, they ask me to simply slow down with curiosity and accept life for what it is: something to merely be experienced, not something to white knuckle with desperate control. Together, we create a shared space in which we become more fully alive. And along the way, I realized the version I needed most, who needed me most, wasn’t just next year’s friend, but the one waiting for me decades ahead: my 75-year-old self.
She is my calmest presence, my steady compass. I imagine her with quiet eyes and a gentle voice, someone who has already lived through all the moments I’m stumbling through now. She teaches me to be kind, loving, and patient. She asks me to not forget about her. She doesn’t expect me to be pretty, rich, or even smart. She offers me permission to be messy, to be angry, to be quiet, to be loud, to just be human. She inspires unconditional, booming empathy. She reminds me of the power of grief. I know she will miss the ordinary moments of her life. She asks that I move through life taking risks, opening myself up to the world, giving her a life she’ll want to savor, to remember with gratitude as she slowly drinks coffee on her porch, getting ready for another daily adventure (because life doesn’t end at 75, especially when you do strength and mobility training).
Here are some of the things she’ll want me to remember: her coworkers excitedly grabbing enormous spare paper towels to take home, buying three dozen roses at Acme last minute for International Women’s Day to give out in the office, getting her haircut by front desk Robert at 7 PM on a Wednesday, bringing therapist Robert 33 cups of Ramen noodles for his 33rd birthday because she saw him eating them once, smelling her dogs’ funkiest breath, getting her heart broken, cold winter nights that leave her cheeks benumbed, slightly burned dinners, “bad bucket” runs, freaking out about being a good therapist, bruises from pole dancing, her hot boyfriend picking up the inquirer off the sidewalk before work, making out on the couch in her late 20’s.
This is what it means to live for your 75-year-old self. It means missing the moments before they’ve passed. So often I step back in an ordinary or painful moment, and I tell her, “I’ll remember for you, and you’ll remind me we survived.” I whisper to myself, “these are the moments,” and I savor, savor, savor them. So, when I’m driving to work heartbroken, confused, worried if I’ll ever be happy, I call on her. I feel her gather me up the way only someone who loves you unconditionally can. And suddenly the world softens. The pain doesn’t disappear, but it becomes something survivable. Life becomes worth living, even in the bad moments. I know she and I will reminisce on all of it when time has caught up, and we’re finally the same person.
Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Development puts this in perspective for me. I notice myself craving a relationship with the virtue of ‘wisdom.’ Prompting me to learn how to call upon my older self, who has been there through all the earlier stages. Wanting to ask her, “How can I show up for you, for us? What do you want to remember? How can we live with our mistakes, imperfections, regrets, and decisions?”
I’m not even past the middle-aged conflict of ‘generativity vs. stagnation’ but find it perfectly sensible to begin exploring Erikson’s last stage. It would be even more honest of me to admit there’s still unfinished business in each of the stages. Some days I feel a sense of resolve, other days I’m dealing with two or three stages all at once. Without the wisdom of my older self, I can spiral into the trappings of needing to know what the “right things” are to resolve my conflicts. I fuse to my fears, landing in rumination and feeling frozen. My ability to make the “right choice” feels like a do-or-die moment, and if I make the wrong choice, I’m dead.
In those moments, calling upon my older self, who survived what felt like a do-or-die moment, reminds me there is no right choice. She encourages me to learn from my mistakes. She reminds me I’m trying to do my best and that there is so much out of my control — so many unknowns. She trusts me. She’s not concerned by my confusion and sense of loss. She knows it’s part of the process. That we turn out okay. “Thank you, dear friend. I love you. I’m glad you exist,” we say to each other. Words borrowed from one of our favorite poems by Wendy Cope.
