Maria and I were watching the powerful HBO documentary on the remarkable life of the comedian Robin Williams, and David Letterman talked about meeting Williams when he was young and just starting out as a comic.

For a long time, I wanted to be a stand up comic, i still sometimes wish I had gone for it. I might yet.

Letterman was nostalgic about those old days, when the young comics gathered together every night at different bars to gossip, support each other  plot their careers and their lives.

I was surprised to hear Letterman say “those were the best days of my life,” when it seemed to me that he had experienced so many good days in his life. And what about now?

What is it we expect from life, after all is said and gone? Eternal youth? A life of no suffering? No disappointment? I have love in my life, work that I love, I have health and meaning, I am doing good almost every day. Isn’t that enough?

I know better than to presume to think I understand what is going on inside the lives of other people.

I often hear older people say what Letterman said, that the best days of their lives were long gone and far in the past. That always seems sad to me. There is this idea embedded deeply in our culture that getting older is, by definition, a time of diminishment and lament.

I am grateful for every day of my life,

I am  uneasy hearing the comments of older people about being older. It has caused me to avoid long conversations with older friends. I don’t really want to talk about medicines and sore elbows. I don’t discuss my health with other people.

I missed the lessons where I was taught that a good life was a perfect life. That people and dogs never get sick or die. That we only mourn lives, but never celebrate them.

That I will never suffer or know disappointment. Like you, I have known a lot of suffering and disappointment. That only makes my gratitude and appreciation stronger.

My faith now is to do good, and that is my religion as I begin to get older.

I call talk about aging old talk, and I have never done it and never like it.

it is inevitably denigrating and wistful. Once I start thinking of myself that way, I will be of no use to anyone, me, Maria, friends or others.

To me, a life that was best decades ago is a sad and unfulfilled life. I am responsible for the life I am living, I have never been happier, more self-aware, more confident or more complete.

I am a freak, as usual, out of sync and outside of the tent that almost everyone else seems to live in. I always knew nostalgia was a trap, i don’t care to fall in it.

I don’t know all that much about David Letterman (I did read his biography), but it seemed to me that he had a very good life, and has a very good life still.

I have to say that this is the best time of my life, and although being young was exciting, and sometimes wonderful, it was also  hampered by immaturity, inexperience, and a fragile emotional structure.

We tend to view the past fondly, and sometimes unrealistically. As anyone ever said out loud that the present is better than the past?

Nostalgia is part of our cultural zeitgeist, it is a honey trap, rarely connected to reality.

Being young was far from the best time of my life, I just didn’t know enough about myself, or about life. I made too many mistakes to live fully and well.

The future belongs to the young, but the philosophers are correct when they say youth is wasted on the young. They just don’t yet know what life is like, and that is why they can accomplish so much.

At 71, I am just beginning to understand life, I have only recently learned enough about me and about life to begin to live it fully and well. I would like for my legs to be 20 again, but I would never wish to be 20 again.

I think the best time of my life is wherever I am in my life. I hope I leave the world on my knees giving thanks. I am nothing but appreciative of living,  however long it lasts. Politics and the news will never take that from me.

Grandma Moses said life is what  you make of it, at any age. She was right, I think.

So was Albert Einstein when he said there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

So much in my life is a miracle. Maria. Red. My farm. The Army Of Good. Ali. The Mansion. The Immigrants. My photography. My blog. The flowers that surround our farmhouse.

My daughter My granddaughter. My friends. My patched up heart. Bud, our new dog. The heroic boys on the soccer team. The heroic refugee mothers.

I am not going backwards a half century to find the best days of my life.

I hope they are yet to come.