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Today is Donald Trump's birthday. He is turning 80 years old and doing some wild and stupid shit to celebrate, which includes turning the White House lawn into a UFC arena. In honor of the President's birthday, The New York Times reached out to a bunch of incredible individuals who are in their eighth decade or have surpassed it. I was today years old when I found out Gloria Steinem was 92. NINETY-TWO. Amazing. She was on the list, along with Bob Dylan, Liza Minnelli, Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel, and Dionne Warwick.
Each person was asked what the best and worst thing about entering your eighties. There were some incredibly wise, dare I say poetic, answers. Here's how Dylan responded, hopefully without the help of ChatGPT:
The best thing
The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.
The worst thing
The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it’s not, and also you’ve run out of illusions. People treat you like either you’ve solved something or you’ve lost something, and you haven’t. You see life repeating itself everywhere.
The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move.
The consensus seems to be that entering this specific era is better for gaining clarity and/or, as Steinem put it, “it’s likely we have some of the immediate pleasures of childhood again.” The biggest consequence that most people pointed to was the tragedy of losing people you love.
There was also a special third question option they could answer: “Any advice for the president as he turns 80?” Dylan was the only person not to answer this question. But the other answers weren’t necessarily advice—or rather, advice I think the President would understand. Steinem offered, “Resign,” while Warwick put it frankly: “Start acting like he is 80!”
Minelli and Garfunkel took a more compassionate route with their answers, addressing sentiments about empathy, fairness, listening carefully, and acting with restraint. De Niro took a different approach:
The president doesn’t listen to advice. He surrounds himself with feckless clowns who keep their positions by supporting his every whim. If I were able to pierce the shell of cruelty, greed, corruption and stupidity for one piece of advice … I would advise him to get some good advice from good people, and follow it.
English (US) · 