Noli nothis permittere te terere

In the opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the poet says that he found himself in the middle of his life, lost in a dark forest (una selva oscura) with no clear pathway through it. It’s usually accepted that he was describing what we in our modern, label-applying world would call a mid-life crisis.

We all know about the mid-life crisis—that nasty little time in our forties where we look at our lives and say “My God! Is this all I am ever going to be?” People do radical and imprudent things while in its clutches. This is when stockbrokers become piano players and marriages break up. Stressful? Of course. Predictable? Probably. But the thing about the midlife crisis is that it is self-made. That makes it controllable—sooner or later. It’s as if the mid-lifer is suffering from buyer’s remorse. He or she wants to revisit choices made in the throes of youth and maybe go back for a refund.

As angst-ridden as the mid-life crisis may be, however, it is nowhere as shattering as the crisis that awaits at 65. If I could, I would tell Dante that if he thought the midlife forest was dark and confusing, it’s nothing to the one waiting for him twenty years in the future. The senior forest makes the younger one look like a thicket.

The senior crisis is more complex and darker because it is a combination of many factors. There is physical reality: even the most fit bodies need tune-ups. There is emotional reality: families are grown, children have families of their own, friends move away or die. There is economic and professional reality: careers end and professional relationships are lost. There is external reality as well: people often start treating seniors as if becoming older also means becoming incompetent. Speaking for myself, I can more or less deal with the first realities. It’s the external one that I find the most difficult. It brings out the worst in me.

I want to snarl when I come across assumptions about and condescension to elders. If you look for them, they are as ubiquitous as the senior discount. I saw it the other day in a doctor’s office. “We don’t give out instructions about what to expect after surgery,” we were told by the surgeon. “Patients might read the possible side effects, convince themselves they have the symptoms, and the phones would be tied up.” Substitute senior for patient and a picture emerges of seniors (the practice serves senior clients) as garrulous hypochondriacs, chronic phone huggers to be treated as children with cheerful firmness, and worriers not to be bothered with details they probably wouldn’t understand anyway. The words patronizing bastard rose to my lips but I didn’t say them. It wasn’t my appointment. God help him if he ever gets me as a patient.

I turn 65 this year and I’m pissed off about it. Maybe that’s my 65 crisis. I don’t want to find my way through the forest. I want to burn it down. I am not comforted by being told that I should be joyous that I have written two books—after all, I’m told smugly, I should be proud that I’ve accomplished them. The words at your age cling like smoke to the mock admiration. Hell, if they’re so great, why aren’t they best sellers? Sure I have a Ph.D. in English and I earned it. But if that’s so wonderful, why couldn’t I get a job when I applied at Barnes and Noble?

I have no idea at this point what to do with myself. I hoped that writing would give me dignity and a role in life. But I am not a retiring Emily Dickinson. I write to be read. And I don’t write the lurid chainsaw murder stories that seem to sell these days. I once tried writing a Harlequin Romance. I couldn’t write to the genre. I kept trying to turn the flimsy structure into some intense exploration of life. I respect the authors who can do it. I can’t.

So here I am, thrashing about in that dark selva oscura looking either for a pathway or a match. But even as I do that, I realize that pathway may not exist. We may all have to take a machete and cut our own ways. I suspect that as we do so, the world will have little advice to help us and many will try to take advantage of our plight. Bette Davis was right: old age is not for sissies. I suppose finding purpose will be the great challenge of turning 65 and dealing with what follows.

All I can say in the meantime is noli nothis permittere te terere—don’t let the bastards wear you down.


Please feel free to comment either below or e-mail at dianamdeluca@aol.com. My website is www.dmdeluca.com