Over the last decade I've thought a lot, some might say obsessed, about what it means to get older (see the "Guestwords" of Nov. 15, 2018, "What Do We Leave Behind?"). Turning 80 this spring has brought with it a surprising twist, a new appreciation for how vulnerability, the thing I fear the most, might be exactly what enables us to survive in middle-old age, indeed across the lifespan.
I do not discount the mounting physical and psychological challenges of aging, nor the way that so many are made vulnerable by virtue of how they are seen by others in any given society. I do, however, want to draw attention to this reality: Consciously or not, we make risk-reward calculations our entire lives, and these decisions may leave us more or less vulnerable.
When I first moved to Amagansett in the early 1970s, I was a long-distance runner easily clocking 40 to 50 miles a week, no matter the season. Running against the traffic didn't seem like a risky business to me except for the occasional stumble, mostly my own fault. The activity was unusual enough in those days for this newspaper to run a profile of me on July 7, 1977, written by Steve Bromley Jr.
The town police were less impressed than Steve by my daily routine, stopping me in mid-run on Bluff Road or Stephen Hand's Path to warn me that I was at risk to myself and others. Unsure of what to do, they most often resorted to threatening a traffic ticket if I didn't move onto the then-nonexistent shoulder of the road. A serious runner, I was not amused by these interruptions. I continued to run into my 50s, when my knees finally gave out and I learned to rely on cycling and swimming for aerobic exercise.
Now an octogenarian, my sense of risk and vulnerability increases at every turn. My peers and I often engage in agonizing, life-altering conversations about how and where to live. When do we surrender the keys to the car? How do we finesse an escalating dependence on others for tasks we once did without a second thought?
For me the risk-reward calculus continues to get played out on the road, most notably in June of last year, when I crashed my bike twice within 10 days. The first spill occurred on a gorgeous early summer day within blocks of my home in Toronto when I failed to see a slight depression in the pavement that sent my tires into an unstoppable skid. When I managed to crawl out of the road, a young woman passing by immediately offered assistance.
She sat with me for a few minutes before deciding to call an ambulance, and waited for the 25 minutes that it took to arrive. Despite the fact that I could not stand and my vision was seriously compromised, I kept saying I was fine. You only recognize shock in hindsight.
By the time the ambulance arrived, and a calm, efficient paramedic had run a diagnostic, I had reached David, my partner, on his cellphone. Although the paramedic preferred to take me to the hospital for more tests, we decided to walk home together with a plan to see my primary care physician the next day.
The second crash happened on another equally sunny afternoon but this time 10 miles from home while I was trying to avoid a family of four on a narrow footbridge at the edge of the Lake Ontario shore. This time I saw the difficulty coming and was actively trying to avoid it when I went over. Nevertheless, I again resisted the assistance of a passer-by who patiently persisted in offering to put the bike in his car and drive me home. When I finally accepted the ride, he waited, like the good Samaritan of the previous week, until David came to the front door, making sure I was handed off to someone who would look after me.
Neither of these events was life-threatening but each pointed out that I am vulnerable to lapses in judgment, slowed response time, and ordinary trials of the road to which I would not have succumbed a decade before.
On reflection, I read these falls as signaling a transition into a new liminal space, one that lies between young-old age, now behind, and middle-old age ahead. I find myself on a roller-coaster ride between an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all of the physical and social privileges that I have enjoyed, and an equally deep disappointment — more honestly rage — about a body that can no longer be counted on to perform the way it once did.
I prize my ability to get on a bike every day as I move about the streets of Toronto and roadways of the East End, and decry the hypervigilance it requires and the shorter distances I can traverse.
Age-related physical/cognitive impairments make me vulnerable in the common-sense meaning of the word — undefended, weak, and at high risk of failure. At the same time, I have gained another understanding of vulnerability as a character trait that allows me to be more porous, more open to what the world may offer, even when my first impulse may be denial or rejection.
I have unending gratitude for the two strangers who came forward to help during my recent crashes. To me they are models of what in the Jewish tradition is called "chesed," or lovingkindness. They went beyond what might be expected to provide comfort and to ensure appropriate care. In a frenzied world, they reminded me that some take the time to step forward, and I only hope that I will do the same in the future.
I am discovering that the paradox of aging gracefully is that, even as our joints stiffen and movements are compromised, it requires a new flexibility and the reimagining of previously taken for granted ways of being in the world. The unfortunate crashes have not made me give up cycling, not yet anyway, but they have prompted me to appreciate the value of vulnerability.
Vulnerability can function as a kind of connective tissue, one whose fibers are made out of our shared humanity. It reminds us that we are all imperfect, incomplete, and interdependent, and that is an essential part of what makes us human. Unfortunately at other stages of life we may easily forget this reality, but in middle-old age that kind of forgetfulness is no longer possible, if it ever was.
Recently we have witnessed too many public figures who have succumbed to commitment escalation, holding on ever tighter when it would have been in the public interest to step aside, redefine their social roles, and trust that others would carry their projects forward. When we are at the top of our game, walking away is sometimes the hardest and most necessary thing to do.
For myself, I'm not ready to step off the roller coaster of emotions that my status as an octogenarian has set in motion, but I am seeing that staying on means letting go, rather than tightening my grip. I'm trying to be more rather than less vulnerable, more open to who and what shows up. Against the grain, I welcome this fresh understanding of vulnerability, hopefully less focused on how things used to be and better able to embrace the possibilities of the here and now.
Jonathan Silin, Ed.D., is the author of "Early Childhood, Aging, and the Life Cycle: Mapping Common Ground." He lives in Amagansett and Toronto and will talk about his work as a writer at Gesher | The Bridge Shul on Friday at 6:45 p.m.