In a State of Declension

It was only recently that I realized I had become old. On the face of it this seems even to me like a stupid—not to say, belated—realization. Other people apparently had reached this conclusion long ago: people on the subway and in buses who would gesticulate toward me to offer their seats; physicians whose first observation at my visit was to note my age—a pattern of behavior that is called profiling when used by policemen; friendly neighbors who would check in with me on stormy or frigid or torrid days to say that they were going out and did I want anything. Until recently I had resisted these gestures of attention. On the other hand I did find myself gravitating to the sides of stairs where there were banisters; I waited for the lights to change before venturing into traffic even when no cars were in sight; I found that I was spending a great deal of time sitting in doctors’ waiting rooms, leafing through the pages of magazines I would never have bought. In fact one of the insidious things about age is the fact that it sidles up on you almost peripherally; and, although it seeps in very gradually, I for one only recognized it in something like a stuttering dribble of deniable symptoms.

Having made this grievous leap or slump into recognition, one is forced to face the consequences; that is, one must assess one’s situation as coolly as one can and determine how best to deal with it. As I now see it there are four major forces that array themselves in opposition to my dwindling energies. And these horsemen of my personal apocalypse are, for rhyme’s sake, entropy, atrophy, ennui, and a knee-jerk attitude of disdainful superiority to much that occurs in the current world.

Entropy is the inevitable process of energy diffusion that Clausius so authoritatively identified: that the heat in the universe is constant, and it will never flow from cold to hot; that is, it must dissipate unless replenished from an external source. Or, to put it in a different way, it is like a stemless watch irreversibly winding down. Entropy—whether we like it or not—is an immutable law of existence; and, confront it as one may, it will, in its own time and at its own pace, defeat us. And, since we can do nothing to stave this off, it seems to me best to reserve one’s energies for other battles and other encounters in which we may be able to do or have the illusion of doing something useful.

Atrophy is a pallid handmaiden to entropy, but one we can struggle with, if only obliquely. In a limited way we can exercise those of our physical and mental muscles that still more or less work, stretch our ligaments a little more than is comfortable, extend our reach a little further, impose something of resistance against the torpor and stupor that become more and more attractive with each slow passage of time. This, I reluctantly recognized, is more difficult than I had thought. An alluring lassitude often surrounds me like a net of gauze, and I find I have to marshal my forces willfully to break through it—to go out rather than stay in, to walk an extra block, to confront a painful complication with honesty, to entertain a new idea. With shame I exhort myself to make substantial efforts to attack something significant: to learn a new language, take up a musical instrument, study chess, quantum mechanics, Chinese history. I. F. Stone learned Greek at my age better to understand Plato; Titian was painting with his fingers into his late eighties. Alas, the best I can do is follow the fortunes of my favorite sports teams, read reams of thrillers and policiers that fall out of my mind as effortlessly as they enter it, and marvel at the research staff that enables Charlie Rose to match punditry with every expert he interviews.

Ennui—a classier term for boredom—surprised me at its entry here. I had always been comfortable...