From the NYT: “A few years ago at a college reunion, I listened transfixed as the silver-haired philanthropist David Rubenstein urged us “to accelerate” as we entered the last chapters of our lives. Pick up the pace? So many of my contemporaries were stopping — if not stooping — to smell the roses.
With his admonition in mind, I recently spoke with Mr. Rubenstein, now 69, and asked him if he considers himself old. “Sixty-nine seems like a teenager to me,” he replied. Coincidentally, just a few days earlier, a 68-year-old poet I know, in between surgeries to help her mend after a fall, told me point blank, “I am an old lady now.”
What makes one sexagenarian identify as old when another doesn’t? And what is “old,” anyway?
Having turned 61, this is a question very much on my mind — and likely to be on the minds of the 70 million baby boomers who are 50-plus (yes, even the tail end of the boom is now “middle-aged” or “old”). Dinner conversations are now hyper-focused on how to stay young or at least delay old.
Certainly the definition of “old” is changing, as life spans have grown longer. “Someone who is 60 years old today is middle-aged,” said Sergei Scherbov, the lead researcher of a multiyear study on aging. When does old begin? I asked.