Joseph Campbell wrote that you need to know where you are in life, and acknowledge it, or you have lost your place in the world. Amen. I am understanding where I am. I am an Older Man, and that has special meaning for me, an important passage that I welcome and work to understand. In America, Older Men are not considered important in our culture, except for their retirement funds and pensions and diapers and medications and friendly chats with the doctor and nursing home and assisted care payment plans. In our media, the only older people that appear are in ads for pills or stories about the national debt.

People talk to me about “our age,” and of memory loss and most especially, of their medications and tests and aches and pains. They make assumptions about me – that I want to talk about my sore feet or my blood pressure or my health. My health care provider called today and asked if I need transportation to my doctors, if I could drive myself, if I could tie my own shoes or needed a special “silver sneaker” program for seniors who need velcro. This, I assume, is because I am now on Medicare.  I wanted to tell her I did not use diapers.  I told her I was healthy, very much at work, very much intending to stay that way. The woman on the phone asked how many medications I was on, and I said none, and she very quickly thanked me and got off the phone. There was nothing to sell me. I am not buying their idea of aging.

At the dentist, the receptionists said I was the first male over 45 they had ever seen fill out the patient information forms who was not on medications for prostate or blood pressure or blood sugar or high cholesterol or circulation. I told her I was either crazy or fortunate.  “Good for  you,” she said.

I know where I am in life, I am in a good place and my life is not about their pills or special offerings or assumptions that I am a withering, sexless, cripple who can’t get to the doctor. What could be unhealthier for people to hear?

For me, being an Older Man is a proud thing. I am in love. I have seen six decades of things, war and peace, Presidents, conflicts, issues, cities. I take seriously my sacred role to pass along what I know to younger people. To the students in my writing workshop. To friends who seek voice in blogs. To people struggling with fear and insecurities. To young writers starting out. An Older Man has a Magic Wand. He knows some magic. He can touch the spirits of people if he will, encourage their hearts and souls, if he will. Whisper his secrets and tricks in ears that are open and understand that wisdom and experience is a kind of currency. He can write what he knows in books, on blogs, on Facebook pages. Despite the efforts of our corporatized world to take my dignity and steal my pride and independence and worth, I am happy to be an Older Man. I knew nothing when I was young, and me and many others paid dearly for that. Now I know a few things, and I am very happy to pass it on.

An Older Man is not young, and I do not wish to live forever. Just well. That is up to me, not them.

I told the woman on the phone that I was not at the end of something, I was at the beginning of something. And that is the truth. I know my place in the world, and that is a very strong and loving hand at my back. Every chance I get I will write my messages and  I will polish my Magic Wand and light up some lives.