People keep telling me I have an unusual and affirmative idea about old age and health care and the inevitable issues of growing older.

Many people I know and have worked with are dead or unwell, many much younger than me. But I know exactly where I am in life. Since I have heart disease and diabetes, some people see me as unwell and suffering from numerous health problems. I don’t see myself that way at all.

I see myself as getting older and dealing with the things older people deal with. We’re all headed for the same place, no matter the problems we have with one another. I see myself as healthier than I’ve been in many years, mentally and physically. I’m getting stronger, sleeping better, eating better, feeling clearer.

I am always surprised when people – doctors, among others – tell me I have an unusually accepting and affirmative view of life.I think they’re confused.  I’m different, they tell me; I never whine or complain.  This surprises me every time. I have no response. I’ll take a stab at it here.  I’d like to understand it better.

A lot of people think I’m temperamental, even nasty.

I don’t see myself as cheerful or upbeat, to be honest. Maria can testify that I am a person of many moods, some dark and bleak. I’ve been in therapy for much of my life. I was treated for chronic anxiety for most of my life. I was a reporter for a good chunk of my life, I saw many bad things happen to good people, and I saw many bad, even evil, people. I have no illusions about life.

But I don’t think so many people would comment on my “good attitude” if there were no truth to it, so I am thinking about that. A friend asked me last night how it was that I got to be so “affirmative,” when I seemed to be enduring so much.

I didn’t have a good answer. Over the weekend, I started reading the essays of Seneca, the brilliant Roman philosopher whose work is new to me. I very much like his article on old age.

I like to think I was a philosopher in another life; I love reading them and following their extraordinary minds and ideas. I get a lot of my truth and “attitude” from philosophers. They see so much more than journalists and pundits do; they have a gift for the long view.

I am rarely conscious of my age or of my health. I just don’t think much about either thing, that feels like a trap to me, emotional quicksand. I am uncomfortable around older people who talk only about their health and their doctors all the time. Old talk can kill. I don’t want to give that much of my head to aging.

Sometimes you just can’t escape it.

Aging was brought back home to me this morning when I visited Moise, my Amish friend on his farm, and saw the progress he is making on his new home. I was uneasy on the snow and ice, and Maria took my arm to steady me and make sure I didn’t slip and fall. She was enthusiastic about seeing the new house, still under construction.

When she went upstairs, she hopped up a wooden staircase that looked steep and slippery to me. I didn’t go. I didn’t feel steady enough to do the climb.  I didn’t go down into the basement either. Nor did I accept an invitation to go sleigh riding. I rarely visit the extremities of any home now. I don’t trust the stairs.

I was walking slowly and stiffly on the ice; I was wary of falling. When you’re older, falling means something very different than when you are young. I used to fall all the time at the first Bedlam Farm. I just got up and walked away. Not now. I wanted to see the whole house, I knew I couldn’t.

Moise noticed my wariness. He kept calling me “grandpa.” When I went home to write, I forgot about the things I couldn’t do and sat down to do something I could still do when I was much younger – write. My mind is one age, my body the other. I never think of myself as old. I appreciate what I can do, I don’t dwell much on what I can’t do.

Seneca wrote that we should accept old age and love it, “it is full of pleasure if you know how to use it. Fruit tastes best when its season is ending; a boy is most handsome at boyhood’s close.” Age is most agreeable, he wrote, on its downward arc – not when the drop is sheer.

For me, being older is much simpler and more satisfying than being young, a time of great uncertainty, unrequited desires, ambition, envy, and competition.

Most of my disappointments and failures are behind me. I have what I want and need, and yearn for no other life or different future. No one can fire me or demote me.  I write what I wish and photograph what I want. That would have been unthinkable for most of my life.

I think many of the bad genes died out as I got older, leaving gentler, more empathetic, and compassionate ones. I have no desire to look back or romanticize my youth.

I never listen to people who believe the younger generation is lazier or dumber than we were; I think the difference is that because we have lived longer, we have just had the opportunity to learn and absorb more things.

Their time will come. Seneca wrote that no one is so old that they cannot legitimately hope for one day more, and one day is a stage of life all of its own. I have learned to stay in the now. I know death is much closer than farther away. But here is my choice.

I can either worry about how much time I have left or give thanks t the time I’ve had and have every day.

Life as a whole consists of different parts, larger circles circumscribed by smaller ones. The enormous circle runs from birth to death. Smaller ones include youth, maturity, work, sex, love, parenting, joy, disappointment, sunrise to sunset. The months are circles of their own; smaller circles are days.

Every day, said Seneca, must be lived as if it were the last circle in the series as if it filled the measure of our lives and closed them.

My favorite aging story:

Seneca wrote of a philosopher friend who lived in Syria and gave himself a mourning dinner every evening, with wine and the usual funeral meats. Then he had his servants carry him from the dining room to the bedroom accompanied by the clapping of eunuchs who chanted. “His life has been lived! His life Has been Lived!,” and” I have finished the course Fortune set me.”

I love this story, it is really how I have chosen to live my life, and if I am, in fact, unusually “affirmative,” then this is why. This, minus the servants and the eunuchs (why eunuchs?),  is what I say to myself in different words every night and every morning. This is the clue I’ve been looking for into this idea of my as an affirmative human being.

The person who can look to tomorrow without anxiety is the happiest and has the firmest hold on him or herself.

The person who says “my life has been lived” gets a windfall with each new day, which offers yet one more opportunity to lead a life that has been lived rather than survive it or give no thanks for it.

So many people tell me I have an incredibly positive attitude about my doctors and my health care, but why am I supposed to feel sad or angry about people who work so hard to make me healthier, safer?

People refer to me sometimes as someone who has a lot of health problems. But is this really true? I had a good friend die of liver cancer recently. I am radically healthier than he was.

I don’t see myself as unwell or plagued by illness.  I’m just getting older, it’s no more or less dramatic than that.

I write every day and take my photos, I’m wearing new clothes with color in them, I have boots that keep me dry in the pasture,  I am learning new things all the time,  I have the most beautiful dogs and donkeys,  and I still make love to the woman I love.

I can’t wait to get up every morning and do my work, writing, visiting the refugees (I’m going tomorrow.) Today the Mansion asked me for an extra-large Santa Claus suit. It’s on the way.

I love that work. Tomorrow I’m heading to Albany to interview a refugee child with a heart-wrenching story to tell.

I love what I do.

What, precisely, is it that I should feel bad or sorry about? I respect life, and death is a part of life. Anyone can die at any time and at any age.

I appreciate my doctors not because they are so sweet and loving to me – some are pretty brusque – but because they make me better and give me ideas about how to be healthy. They make it possible for me to be older and keep my life intact. I am grateful to them for that. I decided a couple of years ago to listen to them, and believe what they told me. That has worked out for me.

They also puzzle me by telling me I have a great attitude. There must be some truth to it, even though I don’t quite know what it is.

Every day is a stage of life, and it is up to me how I live it.

Someone asked me recently if I was still angry at my parents because life with them was brutal and often cruel.

I am not, I said. They are gone, they did the best that they could,    and I hope they rest in peace. I won’t waste my life hanging on to resentment.

I am responsible for my life now; I won’t waste one minute hating them or resenting them for what happened eons ago.

I am old enough to be held accountable for my life, and I won’t speak poorly of it or the people who made it possible for me to live it.

I know that health is as much about attitude as it is about doctors and pills. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice. I choose to get help for my pain and appreciate what I have, not what I have lost. I couldn’t see Moise’s basement or attic, but I saw his house and his pride and happiness in building it.

I take what is mine and give the rest back to the Gods for further distribution. No one escapes aging and death.

“It is bad to live under constraint,” wrote Seneca, “but nothing can constrain a man or woman to live under constraint.”

Seneca also quoted Epicurus, who said that “We should thank God that no man can be chained to life, we are in a position to trample the very constraints.” It took me many years of living to understand that these constraints were in my head; they were inside of me, not outside of me. I stopped looking elsewhere for meaning and happiness and got to work having some. Remember Dorothy and her red slippers?

She was wiser than I knew. I could be free whenever I chose to be free. Like Dorothy, I just didn’t know I had a voice in the matter.

That’s my attitude about life, for better or worse. I don’t need eunuchs and a procession. I can say today, “I have lived, I have lived the course fortune sent me.” I hope that answers the question it helps me to understand it. Thanks for listening to my swirling brain..