Turning Sixty

It is my wife’s birthday today and no, she’s not turning sixty. More like 74.

 

It is also the birthday of my dear friend Julie (aka Ralf), who was my student when she was twelve and now (I think) is turning 64. 

 

It is also the birthday of my colleague James Harding, who I first met in Bali for ten minutes when he was 23. We met again in San Francisco when, at 26 years old, he came one day to observe me teaching a music class. And stayed for the next 30 years. Even in my retirement, we still teach side-by-side in the Orff summer course. And yes, he is the one turning 60. 

 

To mark the occasion, I sent him an old Chinese poem to remind him that these milestone turning of years is as old as ancient China and both our astonishment and our hopeful reflections seem to be a universal human experience. Here’s what Po Chu-I, a Chinese poet from the 8^th century, had to say on the subject:

 

ON BEING SIXTY

Between thirty and forty, one is distracted by the Five Lusts. 

Between seventy and eighty, one is prey to a hundred diseases. 

But from fifty to sixty, one is free from all ills.

Calm and still, the heart enjoys rest.

 

I have put behind me Love and Greed; I have done with Profit and Fame.

I am still short of illness and decay and far from decrepit age.

Strength of limb I still possess to seek the rivers and hills.

Still my heart has spirit enough to listen to flutes and strings.

As leisure I open new wine and taste several cups.

Drunken I recall old poem and sing a whole volume. 

Meng-te has asked for a poem and, herewith I exhort him

Not to complain of three-score, ‘the time of obedient ears.’

                           (Translated by Arthur Waley)

 

Looking for this poem, I uncovered something I wrote for a performance at an Orff Conference that James and I were involved in. It was from our group Xephyr, a group of some seven Orff teachers who decided to create pieces applying the way we taught kids to our own creative impulses. This year, 1999, we invited other Orff friends and did a show with some twenty of us. One of the highlights was a piece about time that included Heidi Tzortsis, the oldest member of our group who had just (gasp!) turned sixty. Amidst our playing, singing and dancing, she read something I had written, an adaptation of a passage from Sandra Cisneros. As follows:

 

"What they don't understand about getting older and what they never tell you is that when you're sixty, you're also 59, 58, 57, 56, all the way down to 1. You look in the mirror and you see 'sixty' but inside you're still 8 or 18 or 42. You take the ferry and stand up front watching seagulls soar and suddenly, you're 23 on your first trip to a Spanish island with your whole life ahead of you. Or you go to a high school reunion and you're 16 again, palling around with the guys and flirting with Phyliss and Barbara. Or you just sit in your chair on a rainy night reading old journals and you feel your full sixty years, amazed by and grateful for the adventure your life has been.

 

So when you wake up each morning, there's 60 different people you can be! You just open your eyes and think, "What age shall I be today?"

 

That’s why, though wisdom is not guaranteed by the simple addition of years, those who live life with their eyes and minds and hearts wide open have something to offer inaccessible to the younger ones. They may be 25, but so are you, with the additional bonus of 26, 27, 28 all the way on up and all the lessons those years have offered.

 

The punch line: Happy birthday to all these important people in my life and everyone, please respect your elders! (Including Joe Biden!)