THE REPORTER
SUMMER 1999

"Aging Sucks." Can We Talk Here?
By Joan Rivers

NOBODY LIKES AGING.

Not Doris Day, who once said, "The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you'll grow out of it."

Not Tom Stoppard, who once said," Age is a high price to pay for maturity."

Not Lady Nancy Astor, British MP, who once said, "I refuse to admit that I'm more than 52, even if that does make my sons illegitimate."

And not Joan Rivers, who tells people, "I was born in 1962. And the room next to mine was 1963."

If aging were only a joke! But it's not and we cannot laugh it off. There is nothing funny about aging: It is rotten and depressing. Anyone who tells you otherwise just hasn't been paying attention. All those magazines that trumpet the pleasures of aging are lying to us. Willard Scott is lying to us on "The Today Show" when he celebrates Aunt Bessie's 100th birthday and tells us what a wonderful time she is having in her walker. Please don't insult our intelligence, Willard. No one who is sitting in damp Depends wants to be told that this is a wonderful moment in her life. She has probably been looking for Dr. Kevorkian's number.

My own mother was the first person who ever told me the truth about aging.

"Joan," she said, "getting older is horrific, but you have to go through it. And not just through it, but through it with dignity."

And that's precisely what I have been trying to do ever since: Go through it with dignity. It hasn't been easy - in fact, at times it's been brutally hard - but doing the very hard, sometimes seemingly impossible, has become a part of most women's lives. I am a woman who bounced back after losing her husband, her TV show, her Broadway show, her jewelry business, her credit rating, her daughter's best wishes, and her reason to get up in the morning Ñ or the early afternoon. I am a woman who, at one point a few years ago, was flat on her back - and not for the best reason to assume that position.

However, from those multifaceted depths, I managed to bounce back, and after a brief period of feeling sorry for myself, I regained a rapport with my daughter, fought my way out of bankruptcy, began writing a new play, and gave rebirth to a career for which people were lighting candles.

Although I am now riding an incredibly happy wave in my life, I still don't want to be one day older. However, since I also don't want to be stupid, I now realize the profound wisdom of this thought: "The older I get, the luckier I am." There is simply no other way to look at aging!

Sure, I've been through a generous portion of hell, but I certainly can't change one bit of it. The only person who can change the past is a sloppy historian, so I concentrate on changing the present. A person with even a modest IQ knows that the present is the only place to live - except for South Hampton, of course. And so I spend all my time living in the now, not in the way back when or the one day when.

IQ does not increase with age. If you were a moron at 20, you'll be a moron at 75.

Seven years after Leonard Bernstein died, one of his daughters decided to sell several of his possessions at auction, including his piano.

"It was wrenching," she said. "However, preserving everything the way it was keeps you stalled in the past."

She wisely knew that everyone must live in the now. It is one of the basic ways to get through aging.

Live in the now, appreciate the now, enjoy the now, be involved in the now, and make sure you are included in the now. Update your ideas, your conversation, your reading list, your home, your gadgets, your politics, your wardrobe. Keep active, keep moving forward, keep looking good. Work hard on your body, your face, your job and your mind. My mother always believed that it's not how old you are but how you are old.

If you're smart, you'll approach aging with both mellowness and grit, with both serenity and an iron will, with both peace and passionate discipline. Aging still will suck, but it needn't entirely suck you in. If you are smart, you will resist aging sensibly: not by mindlessly worshipping youth but by making your life as good as it can be at every age - except 16. At 16, the only help you need is Dermasil.

"Yes, I've been trying to hold on to every element of my youth," says Faye Wattleton, head of the Center for Gender Equality. "I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If we can retard the process of aging, the quality of life is improved because aging does bring
certain changes."

Absolutely, Faye. One of the changes it brings is a clicking in our joints when we get out of bed that leaves us wanting to be greased and lubed. But if you stagger to the mirror from time to time, with almost total honesty, you can say: "I'm amazing for my age. I look amazing, feel amazing, and my life is amazing, too," then you are winning the silent battle we are all fighting and you will have done it all by yourself!

If you're smart, you will seize every moment. I don't want to hear you say, "Why go to Europe since I only have four days?" Take five days. Europe is small, days are long, you'll regret not having gone.

I went to St. Petersburg - no, not the one in Florida - for three days in the middle of the winter. All my friends said, "Three days? What can you do in three days? Wait till you have at least a week," Well, it was the best trip of my life. I stood in the Hermitage and I walked the streets that Peter the Great walked and I had 32 kinds of borscht and I saw a performance of the opera "Navista." Three magical, unforgettable days.

Kim Basinger once said, "When I'm old, I'm never going to say, "I didn't do this" or "I regret that," I'm going to say, "I don't regret a damn thing. I came, I went, and I did it all!"

If you are smart and eat right and exercise well and have been suctioned out and can suck in your gut and hold it, if you've taken that long hard look in the mirror and decided you still look great at 50, then you will put on that bandage dress by Leger and flaunt it and know that people will think you look terrific and the hell with your age!

I've had my face revised from time to time. In fact, Darwin would be happy to know that my face is in a constant state of evolution.

If you are smart, you will also accept reality. If the hard look in the mirror tells you that you can't wear that Leger, then know that at least you can still look up-to-date and not like someone who was just pulled off the Titanic.

"That's easy for you to say, Joan," you're telling me. "You can afford gyms and spas and vacations and new clothes."

But money isn't the key to staying youthful and attractive. As I have said before, the best exercise is free and the best grooming is simple and cheap. Brushing your hair, using makeup intelligently, and wearing a nice piece of jewelry with simple, tailored clothes does not require a sale of stock.

And, if you are smart, you'll understand that, every once in a while, you're going to slip up and look like a fool, so keep your sense of humor and remember you can always regroup. I used to love to dance at discos, to make up my own steps and be carefree on the floor, but there comes a moment when you realize that this particular woman should no longer be hopping around under the spinning mirror ball.

If you are smart, you will also know that you've got to have hope. My friend Tyne Daly says, "Hope is a muscle." In other words, you have to keep exercising it. Emily Dickinson wrote, "Hope is a thing with feathers," but I prefer Tyne's definition. Anyway, Emily Dickinson never got out of the house, so what did she know? I want you to get out of the house, and I want you to believe what I do: that good things even come out of bad ones. In fact, I've rarely seen anything bad that didn't lead to something positive.

But you've got to keep making the positive happen; you've got to work at turning around whatever befalls you so that it works to your advantage. For example, if you have a hysterectomy, make them give you a tummy tuck at the same time. Somebody has to sew you up, so let it be a plastic surgeon. That's what I did and I was the only happy lady on my floor. The other women were moaning, "Oh, it's over; what's left for me?" But I was looking down at my stomach and thinking: I can wear a two-piece bathing suit again!

They say that when you get older, your sex life diminishes. That would mean I'd owe.

Try to turn everything to your advantage. If your feet hurt and you can't take another step in heels, say, "Aren't I lucky that this year flats are in?" And you're wearing them not because your feet hurt but because you're hip.

In the words of the song: Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Not only should you not dwell on the negative, but avoid friends who dwell on it.

People who tell me they feel burned out drive me up the wall (which at least is good exercise), because it really means they are bored, and there's no excuse for being bored unless you happen to be in solitary confinement. It is the height - well, really the depth - of stupidity to feel burned out on a planet overflowing with the riches that Robert Louis Stevenson recommended to children with the words: The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be happy as kings.

Forget the Sears catalog and read the one from your local community college and your YWCA. Volunteer to play with children in hospitals or work at an Adult Literacy Center and see how quickly your burnout is extinguished.

When you realize all that baggage that comes with aging, REFUSE to pay the C.O.D.

The Beatles may have believed in yesterday when they sang as a group, but, offstage, Paul McCartney has always believed in today. Right after the tragic death of his wife, Linda, he spoke of the philosophy that had kept the two of them happy for 30 years.

"If I could have just one wish, it would be to enjoy today. That's it. If I can go to bed at night and say, 'Yeah, that was good,' then that really is all there is."

Yesterday is a ghost and tomorrow is a dream. It is always right now. Be thankful that God has given you this right now. Many of your friends and loved ones no longer have it, so enjoy it. You don't have to be Einstein to figure that out. The Three Stooges knew it. They laughed till they dropped.

Joan Rivers is the author of several bestselling books, the host of cable TV's E! preshow commentary on fashion for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award telecasts. She can be heard nightly on her syndicated talk-radio show.

This article is excerpted from Joan Rivers' new book,
"Don't Count the Candles: Just Keep the Fire Lit",
with permission from HarperCollins Publishers (April 1999).

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