Cosmo Landesman on turning 70: 'It's just a number, right? What's the big deal?' By Cosmo Landesman For You Magazine Published: 08:01, 21 September 2024 | Updated: 08:01, 21 September 2024 e-mail View comments How does it feel to turn 70? It feels strange. Just yesterday, it seems, I was 60. And the day before that I was 50.
A fortnight ago, I was 15 and falling in love for the first time. And now I’m 70! That’s proper old. I know this because when I turned 50 and then 60, friends said I looked great for my age and they made jokes about getting me a Zimmer frame for my birthday.
This time, when I said I was 70 there was an awkward silence – as if I had just delivered some bad medical news. ‘When I look in the mirror, I can’t believe what that cruel vandal time has done to me’ And when I look in the mirror in the morning, I can’t believe what that cruel vandal time has done to me: the deep slash-lines of age; the bloated bags under the eyes; the litter of ageing spots and bumpy-lumpy things. Then there’s my wobbly chicken neck, my expanding belly and my drooping buttocks.
Reader, I’ll spare you the details of my melancholic scrotum. People see me as an older bloke, too. On public transport, young men get up to offer me their seat.
(It was only yesterday that I was offering older people my seat!) I should be touched by their kindness and I am, but I can’t help thinking, ‘P*** off, I’m not that bloody old!’ How did I become 70? I was once a young baby boomer in the late 1960s with long hair and crazy dreams. We were the first real anti-old-age generation; the architects of today’s ageism. Before us old age was a fact of life and you were expected to respect your elders.
But we boomers didn’t. To us, it was a grim, joyless business being old. In our youthful arrogance we assumed old age was a kind of disease that killed everything that made life worth living: love, idealism and dynamism.
‘Hope I die before I get old’ sang The Who, and we all agreed. People ask me how I feel about turning 70. I tell them that it depends on which me they’re asking.
There’s Cool Me who’s happy to turn 70 and says, ‘It’s just a number, right? What’s the big deal?’ And then there’s Uncool Me who wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks, ‘Oh my god! I’m 70! SEVEN-TEEEE! My life is over! Help!’ Cool Me tries to reason with Uncool Me. He says in a calm voice, ‘Hey, relax! It’s great growing old. You’ve time to really appreciate your life – the beauty of a sunny day, the pleasure of your morning cup of tea, the song of the birds, the laughter of children.
..’ To which Uncool Me says, ‘Will you shut the f*** up with all that I’m-so-happy-to-be-old crap! Seventy is not just a number: it’s a text from the Grim Reaper and reads, “See ya soon!” Seventy marks the beginning of the descent into decrepitude.
Get real! Don’t you know that as you get older your brain shrinks, your memory declines, your muscles atrophy, your libido dies and even your penis gets smaller? So please don’t tell me how great it is to be 70!’ ‘But it is,’ says Cool Me. ‘These days my gratitude list is longer than my to-do list. I still have my teeth, my hair and I have my pensioner’s bus pass, which I love.
’ ‘Really, is that all you get for growing old?’ ‘No. You learn how precious time is. And there’s a special kind of freedom that comes with age.
All the things you used to worry and fuss about don’t seem to matter any more. You laugh a lot more, too. You come to see how funny life is – and how you are part of the joke.
Yes, you lose the dynamism of youth, but you gain the deep contentment of age.’ ‘Oh, really? Give me the dynamism of youth any day. And you can keep your wise old-bloke contentment – I wanna rock ’n’ roll till I drop! By the way, how’s your love life, grandad?’ I’m glad you brought that up.
A big part of my fear of growing old was my male fear that after a certain age women would not find me sexually attractive. There was, I imagined, some turning point in time – 60? 70? – when you went from being a sexy, desirable man to a man who women saw as ‘sweet’ and ‘kind’ and ‘good company’. But shaggable? Yuck! So where once there was passion in the bedroom there would be the peck on the cheek, the quick cuddle.
Out come the dentures, off goes the light and goodnight Vienna – your sex life is over. How wrong was I! I’ll spare you the details, but just let me say that advancing age is no barrier to an exciting sex life. In my 60s I was too busy living to think about my life.
But 70 is set to be a time of self-reflection. You look back and wonder about the choices you’ve made. Most men I know feel a sense of failure or disappointment with their lives.
They are full of regret for the things they did – and for the things they never did. I know those feelings all too well. I have 1,001 regrets but only one life, so I try to live in the here and now.
You can’t change your past, but you can change the way you think about it. I have experienced profound love in romance and a profound sense of loss following the death of my son Jack in 2015. By 70 I feel I should have acquired a little wisdom about it all, a few simple truths to share with my other son and younger friends.
When young, you think you have all the answers – and now I have nothing but questions. If I have learnt anything it’s this: we can lose anyone we love any time, anywhere. As for the future, I don’t have a bucket list of things I want to do before it’s all over: no desire to climb mountains, swim with dolphins or see the Taj Mahal.
My challenges are more humdrum and closer to home: I want to be a better dad to my younger son, a better friend to my friends, a kinder and more patient person than I have been in the past. So, though I accept that I’m 70, I am still that shy teenage boy who is desperate for girls to like him; I’m the 30-year old with big dreams of literary success; I’m the 50-year-old with big disappointments and I’m the grumpy 60-year-old who discovered the meaning of grief. And even though I am happy with my life, there are moments when I ask, ‘Is this all there is?’ My little life full of days disappearing down the plughole of time.
Today 70, tomorrow 80. You wonder, ‘What’s the point?’ When the gloomy thoughts arise I remind myself what Agatha Christie once said. Life can be miserable and full of sorrow but, ‘I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing’.
It’s only now I’m 70 that I see how grand it is. Hair and make-up: Nadira Persaud Share or comment on this article: Cosmo Landesman on turning 70: 'It's just a number, right? What's the big deal?' e-mail Add comment.
