Anne Lamott has this gift of making aging look less like a slow erosion and more like a stand-up set we all get drafted into. I love her line: “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” That’s as good an owner’s manual for the body in midlife as I’ve ever heard.
What resonates with me is that Anne doesn’t sugarcoat. She admits her chin has “gone south” and her knees sound like Rice Krispies, but instead of despair, she finds comedy. And that’s a reminder I need: when the reading glasses multiply like rabbits or I forget why I walked into the kitchen, the only real option is to laugh.
Aging, in her hands, isn’t just about creaks and wrinkles. It’s spiritual exfoliation. Each year sands down another layer of ego until something freer, softer, and more real emerges. She jokes that she dresses like a teenage boy, and I think that’s the point—we finally stop caring what the world thinks and start caring about what makes us feel alive.
The older I get, the more I realize the punchlines get better in the third act. The knees may not, but the punchlines do. And, as Anne might add, all of this sure beats the alternative.
I’m honored to be teaching with Anne Lamott and her husband, Neal Allen at MEA’s Santa Fe campus November 17-22 in a workshop called “Tame Your Inner Critic: The Path to Fearless Living.” You can also hear the two of them on my recent Midlife Chrysalis episode.
-Chip