The State of the Art of Aging

The four Ms

I recently read this quote from the African-American theologian Howard Thurman: “The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions; you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge.” I took this as a good prompt for composing my State of the Art of Aging report. What has helped me keep my horizons open?

MOVING. Growing up as an Air Force brat, I went to ten different schools in 12 years. This formed my character in a number of ways, and I’ve come to understand that possibly the most influential was that it instilled in me an acceptance of change. Don’t get too attached to this house, to this school, to these friends, because in a year or two all of those things will change. Moving didn’t bother me. I liked becoming worldly at a young age (we lived in Japan for three years), and my writing career got its start in the form of letters to pen pals from places where I used to live. I was a precociously bright kid — my sister, two years older, would come home from school and share what she learned, so I could read by the time I was 5 and that has served me all my life, especially because I didn’t get much intellectual or emotional nourishment from my uneducated parents. I was so different from my family that I took refuge in reading books and listening to pop music, which represented a wider world — an open horizon. That was my salvation as a kid and it has continued to this day.

MEDITATION. I absorbed so much information about the world from pop music. When the Beatles started meditating, I took notice and formulated my own practice. In my mid-twenties, as an ambitious young journalist, I noticed my hairline starting to recede, which something I read suggested could be related to stress. There’s always something to get stressed out about, certainly as a writer — deadlines, competition, making a living, perfectionism. Perhaps because I’m a Taurus and have always been both brainy AND embodied, somewhere along the line I realized that stress could damage your health. I made a “script decision” to reduce stress in my life whenever possible, and I have developed many strategies for minimizing stress. I have found ways to stay informed about what’s going on in the world without subjecting myself to the sensationalism and fear-mongering of television and network news. During the AIDS crisis — the single worst thing that has happened in my lifetime (the Trump presidency being the second) — I started studying Buddhist meditation in earnest and have meditated virtually every day since 1990, which has taught me awareness of what causes suffering and given me practice at letting go.

MASSAGE. It took me a long time to cultivate an aptitude for presence. I’ve always been cerebral and planny planny planny. But two of my favorite activities as an adult — personally and professionally — have been going to the theater and having sex, both of which require that you Be Here Now. I’ve always treasured touch, and a major turning point in my life came when I decided to get trained to do massage professionally. This was also partly inspired by living through AIDS and volunteering with Gay Men’s Health Crisis. People living with AIDS were often ostracized and desperately craved touch, and being skillful about it was important to me. Touch, breath, and presence have fed me virtually every day since then.

MARRIAGE. Intimate relationships have always been extremely important to me. I’ve been partnered on and off for 50 years now, and marriage has become one of the supreme satisfactions in my life. When I proposed to my husband Andy on the beach in Vieques in 2017, my friend Michael was shocked — “Don Shewey is such a slut, how can he possibly want to settle down with one guy???” Well, we got married in Michael’s back yard in Bucks County, it was an unconventional wedding, and it’s been an unconventional marriage. We feed each other’s souls with love, laughter, intellectual companionship, and erotic playfulness. For me, it is an essential refuge and is one of the key things — along with music, meditation, and cocksucking — that helps to keep me from descending into despair when the world gets too scary and chaotic.

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