I recently turned 77. That is old. I got many congratulatory messages. I found them a bit sad but not because I am undeniably well onto the downslope. Years go by, the slope changes. That’s the way life goes. 

It also wasn’t because so many messages were from people I did not know by way of some kind of reflexive feature of Facebook – “happy birthday, many more.” Thanks a bunch.

No, what upset me was that the well wishing seemed to set a too low bar for offering congratulations. Che died at 39.  So why am I alive? 

I can hear folks say, but you are no Che. And that is certainly true. And it is of course a big part of why I am alive and Che is not. Indeed, that and related observations about the nature of living in a world that is viciously inhospitable to most people’s lives explains why I am alive at 77, and millions upon millions upon millions aren’t. Also, not exactly grist for congratulations. 

When I became 75 I got a present in the mail. It was a t-shirt with a message on it. I am not much for being an ambulatory advertisement and so I have never before worn a mini billboard. But I wore that. It was a brilliant present. Its message was: “If you haven’t grown up by age 75, you don’t have too.” I liked that. 

Different views from different angles, I suppose. But from my perch, the advisory artistically blazoned on my then new shirt meant if you still haven’t grown up at 75 in the sense of “Grow Up Dammit”—don’t bother. 

I don’t think the reason I haven’t grown up at age 75 and now 77 is some genetic error, or a personal inadequacy, or even some act of will on my part. I think, instead, that back when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I became what I think the word “adult” ought to mean—but usually doesn’t. 

That is, I became an adult who was stuck young. Situations and invocations produced that in me. I didn’t have to work at it. It just flowed unto me. What stopped me from “growing up” was my coming of age amidst so many people battling against war, racism, and every manner of injustice and doing so in a community bound by a new ethos of solidarity and collectivity and guided by careful, critical, thinking. I was 20 in 1967.

What can I say? In my head, I think I am still stuck at roughly twenty. And I am not alone. There are others like me, also stuck due to their own prior circumstances. And we are not clinging, I think, to Glory Days, like a ballplayer who lives forever in a fantasy of still playing ball. We know it isn’t still the Sixties. No, we are stuck at twenty because despite muscles, nerves and veins atrophying, misfiring, and clogging, we are still in key respects like we were back when. 

We are still moved by pain and suffering wherever it sits. We are still moved by desire for and belief in better, wherever it stirs. It is still a low bar, I think, and little cause for congratulation. Regrettably, though, I have to admit that this type of non-adulthood is a condition that the machinations of our social situations tirelessly work to extinguish. 

Okay, so for that reason I guess maybe a tiny congratulation is due those who don’t become adults in the horrid, status quo worshipping, ignore others and enrich self sense of the world we inhabit.

So my birthday message to others is, if you want to avoid being an atomistic adult. If you want to avoid being pushed and pulled by vile lies and conforming pressures. Think like logic matters. Think like evidence matters. Think like what we choose to address and how we try to communicate what we thereby learn matters. Think like consequences beyond you, your family, and yours friends matter. Do that not only to understand what is, but also to win what ought to be.

Feel like you matter. Feel like they matter. Feel like everyone fucking matters. To feel the opposite of that is to “grow up.” We ought not “grow up.”

When I became 64 it was a bit traumatic. You may laugh, but it was because of the song “When I’m 64.” Give it a listen and you may understand why it weighed on me as that birthday approached. Seventy five and now 77 are different. They are just impossible to comprehend. I am the age old folks are. How can that be?

That’s the sixties in my mind, talking. Maybe it is not even healthy, in some respects. But even stuck at twenty here is the truth of the Beatles lyric that is lost to many listeners due to the song’s somewhat jovial, rollicking melody. 

Fair warning. Aging is no picnic. Aging is in many respects a real downer. My father used to periodically quote a favorite poem. The key line was “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.” He died of Alzheimers. Cancer got my mother and brother. Dementia got my partner. If you get lucky, just your body wastes away. If luck betrays you, your mind decays too. Those are the facts. So on top of those, here is some unrequested advice from someone 13 years beyond 64.

Forget about age. Address what you can affect. It holds for health. It holds for the world around us. Don’t ever be fooled into thinking the finishing end is at hand. There is no point. Have confidence. Confidence matters a whole lot. In everything. And where confidence may matter most, for everyone, is in changing the world. Have confidence not that you alone can change the world, not that your friend or you mentor alone can, not that anyone alone can, but that we all can, together. 

Selfies have nothing to do with winning a better world. Greed is not the highest achievement of humanity. Anonymous likes are ludicrous. Care. That was what the circumstances of my early years taught me, when selfies didn’t even exist. 

It is a simple, obvious insight that “grown up” teachers, “grown up” politicians, “grown up” owners, and “grown up” lawyers nearly all try to stamp and stomp into remission. All try to make you feel like them, to make you be like them. 

But despite all that, collective desire and confidence keeps re-surfacing. Are you literally young? Good. Going forward, don’t mistake taking orders, following other’s agendas, spouting other’s words, fitting fucking in for becoming adult. Don’t become part of an old folks home at the college. 

The key to not becoming “grown up,” at least as I hear the words, is to believe in the power of people. It is to believe in the power of you and me and everyone who tries to collectively contribute to the one pursuit that undeniably matters above all other pursuits. 

Not earning more, more, and still more. Not winning the next argument, and then the next and the next, at least in the mirror of your own mind. Not even planting the next flower or bestowing the next sincere good wishes or nice gift on a friend or a loved one. 

What matters above all else, until we succeed at it, is to conceive and attain new institutions, new habits, new lives—before the world of mass-produced buttoned-down grown ups ends us all. What matters is getting us all or our kids and their kids to another world. 

Mother Jones said it this way: “No matter what the fight, don’t be ladylike! God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.” 

My birthday shirt said, don’t grow up. Stay forever young. And I will heed my t shirt. I will try not to grow up in my remaining time, too. 

Sure, time does go by—but stay young. 

And I hope you have many happy, healthy, and collectively productive birthdays to come. 

And if you are old already, well, okay get young again—and please note, that is not the same as go work out and modify your diet. 

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