Here's a bracing one-two punch guaranteed to put a skip in your step:
• A recent article in Forbes magazine came with this reassuring headline: "Retirement Advice: Don't Get Old, Don't Get Sick, Don't Retire"
Any questions?
• A new book, "100 Plus" by Sonia Arrison, says living to 100 will be commonplace in the not-so-distant future, with a life span of 150 years possible.
Put those two items together and you have to conclude that the only financially sound way to get through these difficult times -- death -- is fading as an option. On the bright side, newborns today will have a chance of experiencing a miracle that will elude the rest of us: a Pirates winning season.
But here's the real upside: When soaring life spans bring a massive increase in the number of actual legitimate old people, perhaps the AARP will stop recruiting at Cub Scout and Brownie meetings.
When you think about it, shouldn't "Don't Get Old, Don't Get Sick, Don't Retire" be the AARP motto? I mean, when was the last time a retired non-millionaire over 50 who had so much as the sniffles appeared on its magazine cover? It's gotten so bad that critics have called AARP "an organization for everybody who has a birthday." Still, you gotta love those discounts.
To me, death, which admittedly has some major image problems, is less of a nightmare than living to 100 -- notwithstanding the opportunity to be on TV with Willard Scott, who will now have to hunt down 200-year-olds whose secret to a long life is that shot of whiskey every day since they were 10.
Of course, I realize increased longevity is not news at all to baby boomers. You people have been counting on living forever from the get-go. But at this point -- and you might want to start taking notes here -- I'd like to say a few words on behalf of death.
What I'm saying is -- and this will pinch a little -- it's highly likely you will be dead before the end of the century, unless you happen to be Zsa Zsa Gabor or Andy Rooney.
Since I am not a boomer, I don't have a grant of immunity from death. In fact, I have been in touch with my mortality since the early 1950s when I had to occasionally dive under my desk at Holy Trinity elementary in case the Russians dropped the big one on Hackensack, N.J.
Growing up Catholic, I also knew that life was pretty much a warm-up act for the afterlife, although I resented the gaping loophole for the chronically dissolute. A person can always redeem himself after a thoroughly reprehensible life with a buzzer-beater of a deathbed confession -- a gross injustice, in my mind, to those of us who have frittered away our lives being living saints.
Still, mortality does come as a bit of a shock even with all that childhood training. Death has been something that happens to other people. (In fact, so far that's still the case!) But having crossed over into senior citizenship, I am now firmly convinced that I will not be around for the Bristol Palin presidency.
Let me mention a second big advantage to death, which is my real point here: It's always good to have a deadline, which is not called DEADline for nothing.
Think of all the things we wouldn't get done if we didn't have deadlines. Here, I have an advantage, having served a lengthy sentence in journalism, the perfect pursuit for non-planners who need some external discipline to focus the mind.
Years ago I was invited to be part of a big group discussion that included therapists, artists and writers. (I know. What fun!) This question came up: "How do you know when you're done?" This struck me as relevant to therapists and artists but not so much to newspaper columnists.
A psychiatrist who evidently knew my work graciously put the question to me as a way of getting me involved. "Well, for me that's easy," I replied. "I know I'm done when Mickey's big hand is on the 12 and his little hand is on the 6." Then I folded myself back into my stupor.
The point is, mortality, though not as precise as Mickey, gives us a deadline. And what a luxury it is to absorb the reality of that deadline while you're still in decent shape, a luxury not afforded to everyone in this remorseless world of premature death, sudden death or the living death of losing one's mind.
For some, that means drawing up bucket lists or getting in more golf. Nothing wrong with that. For me, it means an incentive to minimize regret for things not done, not so much externals such as seeing the pyramids or finally eating a Primanti's sandwich, but things unsaid and unresolved with those close to me. Much to my regret, this was something I didn't have the psychological wherewithal to do with my parents, even though I was well into my 40s when they died.
For me, it means seeing clearly that time is a precious, finite commodity, best spent appreciating family and friends (not including my poker pals, who, insensitive to my mortality, continue to separate me from my money). It also means a chance to circle back on important friendships of long ago, broken off by time and space.
Then there are those pesky siblings. There's nothing inevitable or even necessary about brothers and sisters being close. But after I retired, I vowed to take a good shot at it before any of us keeled over. Big family gatherings are fun. But, as I strive for closer connection in older age, I've become more of a one-on-one guy. So I picked off all four of them one at a time. I got to express appreciation to my older brother for being like a father to me when I was a kid. I got to talk with my other brother, for the first time, about what it was like growing up Catholic and gay in the '50s. (Answer: not easy.)
It's a great time of life to say thank you and seek forgiveness, because you never know when you won't get that chance.
Haven't missed the deadline yet.
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