The Joy Of Old Age (No Kidding)....

Oliver Sacks M.D. writes about his turning 80 with a grace and comfort that many of us should strive for. Mr. Sacks is a Neurologist, a Professor of both Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center until this year when he took a similar position at New York University. He is also an author, having penned such books as 1973's "Awakenings" which was turned into a movie starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro as well as 2007's Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain and 2012's Hallucinations.

Doctor Sacks turns eighty years old this Tuesday and has written a very nice column about this event in today's New York Times.

A short excerpt:

At 80, the specter of dementia or stroke looms. A third of one’s contemporaries are dead, and many more, with profound mental or physical damage, are trapped in a tragic and minimal existence. At 80 the marks of decay are all too visible. One’s reactions are a little slower, names more frequently elude one, and one’s energies must be husbanded, but even so, one may often feel full of energy and life and not at all “old.” Perhaps, with luck, I will make it, more or less intact, for another few years and be granted the liberty to continue to love and work, the two most important things, Freud insisted, in life.

Its not very long, but it is very good.

Go read it....


Sources:

http://www.oliversacks.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sacks

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-old-age-no-kidding.html?hp&_r=0