What Finally Matters as You Get Older

When I first got sober, which was 35 years ago, somebody said to me, uh, I came into recovery as a big shot, and these sober people helped me work my way up to servant. And so, as I become a woman who is of service to younger women, I feel something that I was looking for my whole life. And that was this kind of >> Let's see. I'm 67 now. And I think as I crossed into the 60s, I I did what one does, which is to realize how much crap I'd been carrying around in my airplane all those years that had just seemed so meaningful and important to hold on to, but it was keeping my psychic plane flying too low. You know, sometimes skimming the treetops. And by 60, you've lost people you literally can't live without. and that you realize how short and precious time our lives are. >> And so you start getting rid of a lot of really stupid stuff you used to care about, like what your butt looks like or, you know, um when I was younger, I was fixated on on uh looking good and impressing people and being bigger and bigger in the world. And now most of the time I really don't particularly care what people think of me, which is probably the greatest blessing of being older. And um I think it was at about 60 um that I all of a sudden realized that I I wanted to stop hitting the snooze button and and really go what what Kam what um Norma said was so true. just wanted to go full tilt boogie into full wakefulness and presence and um and gratitude and and not not just that in um immediacy with what is here and what is to come instead of all the mistakes and uh all the indignities of of of a human life lived fully but um with with mistakes and and embarrassments and disappointments and just to just to go for it just to see. You said that you kind of decided to put your foot on the pedal, right? Go full speed ahead. How has that changed your writing? >> Well, I don't think I did say that, Maria, that I wanted to go full speed ahead with my foot on the pedal. But because I uh one of the things I love about being older is um how much more I uh love to putter. You know, putter as a one of the sacraments, putter and plopage. But um I I take things a lot easier. That's one of the blessings of being older. And I I'll get to the writing part. But another thing is is the the the grace of myopia, you know, as as my vi my uh actual vision has failed, so has my spiritual vision and my psychological vision of being able to see what everything else is doing that's so annoying and which I wish they would stop doing so that I could have more peace of mind. and you get myopic and it's a good thing. You just don't notice what's wrong with people like in the way in the fixated way you used to. So that's a blessing. So I decided to rather than full speed ahead to push back my sleeves and enter in fully um in the new channel away from brain and ambition into heart and soul and and immediacy and appreciation and um how the way that it's affected my writing is just unbelievable because before I kind of felt like a greyhound a dog a greyhound dog at the races was always chasing after the next thing that I could achieve or be um honored for. And you know, my feet hurt all the most of the time now. And um and I need a nap most afternoons and I'm just you know, I just can't make it as a greyhound anymore. [snorts] And um and so with my writing, there's nothing out there that I need to do to feel good about this one woman's life lived. Nothing. Just nothing. I really want to be in service. I really want to uh when I first got sober, which was 35 years ago, somebody said to me, uh, I came into recovery as a big shot and these sober people helped me work my way up to servant. And so, as I become a woman who is of service to younger women, I feel something that I was looking for my whole life. And that was this kind of fulfillment that really wasn't out there. That all along it had to be an inside job. And I think that's another blessing of being a little bit older. >> I love that that you you kind of you had been pursuing, right, talking about what was out there and then you found that what you had been looking for was inside of you. >> Yes. That it's an inside job and that if you if you hold your palm a few inches from your face, I have learned that anything outside of my palm is not going to work for very long. is I'm going to get a fix or a hit. My son has these this um podcast site called Hello Humans and he interviewed Paul Williams, a great composer and songwriter and singer and he to he and Sam were both in recovery, clean and sober and he told Sam that when he won the Oscar for the Barbara Stryand movie before he got clean, he stood in front of millions of people on the worldwide stage, the hugest place of accolades that an artist could ever achieve. And he said it bought him 20 24 hours, you know, and then the jungle drum started beating again because it was it was not an inside job. It was, >> you know, this kind of thrilling crack cocaine of the world's approval and respect, but all we've ever longed for is our own respect and gentleness with ourselves. What do women want? We want our own self-respect and we want a gentleness of spirit and we want the ability to do and try anything that's on our heart. >> I love that. Norma, picking up on that because I read an interview where you said it took you many decades to find your selfestee esteem, your self-respect. And people would have thought, oh well, you were so famous, you were so successful, you didn't have that. take us on that trajectory because it picks up on what Annie was saying. >> I I think I I think we're all um in a constant uh re-evaluation of self-esteem. Any event that challenges who we are, not only as women, but just as human beings, gives us the opportunity to look at how we feel about ourselves and how much power we actually have. And those exercises are very important in helping us re-evaluate what's important and re-evaluate where we are with our self-esteem. So, there have been times through the years where I felt really great and then all of a sudden something really shitty happens and I'm like, "Oh my god, I feel like crap. What happened? I was doing so well." But the point is it's it's just going to continue that way. I don't think it's going to be different now. I think that will continue except I'm such a more evolved version of myself that I'm able to experience it in a different way. And and obviously that's the beauty of time. It gives you the wealth of knowledge about how you are emotionally and physically and spiritually. So I I am constantly re-evaluating my own self-esteem. >> When you say you also look ahead 5 years, 10 years, 15 years when you were in your 40s and 50s, did you think like that? Did you think, oh, I'll be doing this at 76 and at 86 I'll be doing that? Or is this a new phenomenon for [clears throat] you? Well, I remember um I guess I was 40 and I had the idea um of how I always wanted to have a creative life till the last breath. So, I knew that was definitely something I would do, but I didn't have a sense of what I would look like at 60. You know, I I didn't have a sense of what that would be. And that's so difficult for someone 40 to think about because it means you're going to have a visual image of an older looking you. >> And I had that image and um and I remember that that image was much older than I look and and it was sort of the the perception of how I understood age. And I think I didn't at the time fully appreciate how much I would be dedicated to healthy lifestyle. I don't think I was fully aware of the impact of my commitment to wellness and sleep, diet, exercise, and a big part of the book. Um, and because of that, I'm physically more um, competent to do a lot of things. I do very competitive workouts because it's good for my head and I love it and I tend to work out with people half my age. I never had that idea in my head that that would be possible or that I would even think about it. I never thought that I would be able to um manage um a business of my scale at this age. I thought that maybe I would have sold it or somebody else would be running it, but I love the involvement and being so involved in new projects that have to do with wellness and healthy lifestyle. So my my visual and my interpretation at 40 of what 60 would be was so different because my lifestyle just changed so dramatically. >> Annie, what about you? Did you think you would be writing just coming out with a new book at 67? Did you think about that at 40? And when you think about yourself now, do you still see yourself 10 years out, 15 years out, writing, creating, being of service? Well, everything's so different now. Um, when Norm and I were coming up, um, like 60 was great grandparents, you know, it was daughtering duly old people doing jigsaw puzzles. And because I've been a lifelong drug addict, I never expected to live very long at all. You know, I didn't expect to see 18 and then I didn't expect to see 30 and then I didn't expect to and then I didn't expect to see 40. And um everything changed. The entire world shifted on its axis when the women's movement sprang forth. I was 16 when the first issue of Miz magazine came out and everything changed then because the people the women gathered to plant trees for girls who hadn't even been born yet were ages that I had total misconceptions about. I thought 50 was kind of old and a little bit past your prime. And yet it was these women in 50 and 60 who ga who literally gave me life who literally redeemed me in whom I found salvation like a Christian might found salvation in in Jesus. I found that in the women's movement I um wow >> it was like God had reached down and touched me. And so I started at 16 to know that that women that were older were were was where it was going to be at. you know, for me as a writer, for a as a literary person, I was going to look to the older writers and poets and and uh in every way um the world broke broke open and and also when I was younger, I don't know if this is true for you, Maria and Norma, but there was just so little consciousness about age, you know, that you got that the result was you fixated on it. And now I have, like Norma was saying, she works out with people half her age and I'm a Sunday school teacher. I'm with little kids all the time. And it was really, really, really old people all the time, like like 90-year-old ladies from the south, you know, who could put us all to shame with their energy, their spiritual and and service and and joy and life energy. So once we started talking about what was true um it meant that so there were so much less divisions between us and um and so it's we're all so wonderfully hodge podgey now in terms of who we work with who we you know who we eat with who we live with who we find our um direction from. And I'll have to say for me, I'm not finding my direction from 25year-olds except in the most important matter of all to me right now, which is climate change. You know, it's the young people that are going to save us now. It's the young people who have what we we produce, us uh me, Norma, and you um the greatest stash of scientific knowledge, data the world could ever know. And we're handing it off to people who have skills that I mean I can hardly work a toaster and and barely work a computer. So um but we're handing it off to people who can't who can take this and run with it like the great baton race of trying to save the earth. So um with I don't look in terms of five and um 10 years ahead of things so much just because I'm so um engrossed in 12step recovery which is one day at a time and I you know uh every single thing I know about living as an older person. I have a 12-year-old grandchild who lives here and my son who you've met. You met both of them, Maria. Um, Jack's when he was a little baby. But, um, everything I know about writing kind of applies to getting older and vice versa. So, that when I teach writing, as you know, I teach shitty first drafts that no one knows what they're doing till they've done something. I'm sure it's true for you, Norman. When you're creating and designing, it's hard to believe you have an absolutely finished thing. You know, it's like wet clay. You're kind of working with a vision that's come through you and you work it. And and that's every draft that every writer I've ever known has produced before they could write something that was publishable. I teach my writing students something I love that the great eel doctoro said, which is that writing is like driving at night with the headlights on. You can only see a little ways in front of you, but you can make the whole journey that way. And so I think about when I'm sitting down to write, which I'm doing again, what can I see? I don't need to know how it turns out. You know, I um what can I see? And I try to get it down the best I can on any given day. Um no matter what my mood, no matter how well I've slept, I just do the best I can on any given day. And it keeps leading to this future that I get to build on. That is the truest I can be in this earth which is all I have to offer.