It should be no surprise, yet it is. Life changes; it is, I think, the thing that life does best and most predictably. For me, a willingness to write about it, talk about it, and think about it with people I trust and love has made all the difference.

It is the spiritual character of life to change, like it or not. I think the transition to older life was bigger than any of the others.

It occurred to me about a dozen years ago that aging could be exciting as well as disconcering and sometimes frightening. It would take time.

Why? The answer is clear if you think about it. Because we are running out of chances, we are also running out of life. That gives it added intensity and importance. Time matters.

If I blow it this time, I remember thinking, I’ll be done for good.

Fate is one of those things that helps me be humbler. It comes whether I want it to or not. It does not care whether I wanted it to or not.

Here’s the part I realized that was and is up to me. Me.

The attitude I brought to it was everything. This came to me as I lay in the recovery room of a hospital in Albany, N.Y., following my open-heart surgery. Was it dangerous, I asked the surgeon? “Well, you’re alive,” he said.

The emergency room nurse said I ought to walk a bit and stay rested for a few days. All the other men on the floor were silent and grim. My spiritual self sprang to life. I love my life and wished to keep it.

I insisted on walking immediately, and with the nurses’ help, I got up and started walking and walking. Two days later, I rounded the desk in the center of the floor 30 times. “Go home,” said the cardiologist. “You, you’ll be fine. You have a good attitude.”

That struck a nerve. I was good at attitude, and often bad at many other things: exercise, staying in a job, making friends, keeping my mouth shut, listening, finding love.

But every one of those things was something I could change if I wished, and aging could give me the chance to do so if I chose to think about it rather than bemoan the inevitable and listen to deadly old talk.

It comes down to this, I thought, as I lay in recovery between walks. It comes down to whether I see my existence – my second chance – as having meaning, for me, for the people I loved, for others. Could I love someone more than I loved myself?

The surgery gave me a kind of enforced pause, not only to recover but to think. I had a lot of time. I didn’t want to blow it. Everything that happened in this process turned out for the good, if I wished. Getting old is the most intense learning experience of my life.

I was free in a surprising way. I had no book I had to read; I had no deadline to finish. I had no job to report to. My striving was over.  There were no dinner parties I had to go to. No family Thanksgiving dinners to dread. No father to argue with, no boss to hate or anger, no editor to criticize my work or tell me what to write, no one to have my time approved.

I thought this was nothing less than a new stage of life – the new change that, on the surface, offered to liberate me in a way no other stage could do. The yearning and ambition and striving were over now; I could just be me, God help me. I didn’t have to get ahead anymore, or prove my worth.

_____

________

What I did have to do was figure out how to be a better man, and a human being who left a drop of good behind him. It was uplifting, doable, affordable, and just possibly, contagious.

If I decided my life was over, then I would have ended it all on my own without even knowing it. I’ve seen a lot of older people just melt away.

And here’s the point. It was all up to me. No one could make this decision for me; there was no number to call or book to read to tell me what to do. I chose life.

Getting older, I’ve learned, requires the curiousity of a five-year-old, the dare of a teenager, the determination and patience of a bullfighter. The past would shape my new life, but not bind me to it.

Old age is full of contradictions. Would aging take my energy and enthusiasm away, or could it centrally energize me? I didn’t know then; I’m not sure now. But that determination might come in handy.

When I spent all that time on the mountain reading Thomas Merton books, I remember reading about one of his personal diaries.

“I want to feel something glorious,” he said, “I want to be a shooting star across the sky of the human race.”

Perhaps there is still some time for me.