Jane Heller

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

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My New Motto: Life Is Too Short to Finish Books and Anything Else That Doesn't Satisfy

September 17, 2015

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I must be getting wiser in my Medicare age. I used to feel compelled to finish virtually everything. I used to sit there watching movies that were boring me or annoying me or giving me no pleasure or escape. I used to at least try to eat everything on my plate in restaurants even if the food wasn’t especially good simply because I was paying for it. And I used to finish every book I bought – 100% of the time. I’m a writer. I felt it was a courtesy to my fellow authors to finish their work – the work I’m sure they’d labored over just as I labor over mine.

Not anymore. If I find myself saying, 50 pages into a book, “I’m not relating to these characters” or “This story is going nowhere” or “This writing leaves me cold,” I put the book down and move on to the next one in my queue. What a feeling of liberation!

Broadening this approach, I’ve also figured out that I don’t have to like everybody and everybody doesn’t have to like me – and I’m not talking about Facebook “likes.” I had a very disagreeable phone conversation with one of my new neighbors recently. At first her attitude stunned me. And then I said, “F*^k it.” I’m learning that even a pleaser like me doesn’t have to befriend everyone. Time is not to be wasted on people who are negative and, in the case of the neighbor, downright nasty. And friends who no longer behave like friends – people who aren’t supportive when things are going well or when they’re not – have no place in my life and it’s O.K. to let them go. I don’t love getting older, but I do love being able to say, as the writer Dominique Browning put it in her terrific piece in The New York Times, “I’m too old for this.” She was speaking primarily of our constant criticisms of our appearance, but the piece resonated with so many people that it was one of the top-viewed Op-Eds the week it ran. Here’s a look.

Fashion & Style | First Person
I’m Too Old for This

By DOMINIQUE BROWNING AUG. 8, 2015

There is a lot that is annoying, and even terrible, about aging. The creakiness of the body; the drifting of the memory; the reprising of personal history ad nauseam, with only yourself to listen.

But there is also something profoundly liberating about aging: an attitude, one that comes hard won. Only when you hit 60 can you begin to say, with great aplomb: “I’m too old for this.”

This line is about to become my personal mantra. I have been rehearsing it vigorously, amazed at how amply I now shrug off annoyances that once would have knocked me off my perch.

A younger woman advised me that “old” may be the wrong word, that I should consider I’m too wise for this, or too smart. But old is the word I want. I’ve earned it.

And let’s just start with being an older woman, shall we? Let others feel bad about their chicken wings — and their bottoms, their necks and their multitude of creases and wrinkles. I’m too old for this. I spent years, starting before I was a teenager, feeling insecure about my looks.

No feature was spared. My hairline: Why did I have to have a widow’s peak, at 10? My toes: too short. My entire body: too fat, and once, even, in the depths of heartbreak, much too thin. Nothing felt right. Well, O.K., I appreciated my ankles. But that’s about it.

What torture we inflict upon ourselves. If we don’t whip ourselves into loathing, then mean girls, hidden like trolls under every one of life’s bridges, will do it for us.

Even the vogue for strange-looking models is little comfort; those women look perfectly, beautifully strange, in a way that no one else does. Otherwise we would all be modeling.

One day recently I emptied out an old trunk. It had been locked for years; I had lost the key and forgotten what was in there. But, curiosity getting the best of me on a rainy afternoon, I managed to pry it open with a screwdriver.

It was full of photographs. There I was, ages 4 to 40. And I saw for the first time that even when I was in the depths of despair about my looks, I had been beautiful.

And there were all my friends; girls and women with whom I had commiserated countless times about hair, weight, all of it, doling out sympathy and praise, just as I expected it heaped upon me: beautiful, too. We were, we are, all beautiful. Just like our mothers told us, or should have. (Ahem.)

Those smiles, radiant with youth, twinkled out of the past, reminding me of the smiles I know today, radiant with strength.

Young(er) women, take this to heart: Why waste time and energy on insecurity? I have no doubt that when I’m 80 I’ll look at pictures of myself when I was 60 and think how young I was then, how filled with joy and beauty.

I’m happy to have a body that is healthy, that gets me where I want to go, that maybe sags and complains, but hangs in there. So maybe I’m too old for skintight jeans, too old for six-inch stilettos, too old for tattoos and too old for green hair.

Weight gain? Simply move to the looser end of the wardrobe, and stop hanging with Ben and Jerry. No big deal. Nothing to lose sleep over. Anyway, I’m too old for sleep, or so it seems most nights.

Which leaves me a bit cranky in the daytime, so it is a good thing I can now work from home. Office politics? Sexism? I’ve seen it all. Watching men make more money, doing less work. Reading the tea leaves as positions shuffle, listening to the kowtow and mumble of stifled resentment.

I want to tell my younger colleagues that it doesn’t matter. Except the sexism, which, like poison ivy, is deep-rooted: You weed the rampant stuff, but it pops up again.

What matters most is the work. Does it give you pleasure, or hope? Does it sustain your soul? My work as a climate activist is the hardest and most fascinating I’ve ever done. I’m too old for the dark forces, for hopelessness and despair. If everyone just kept their eyes on the ball, and followed through each swing, we’d all be more productive, and not just on the golf course.

The key to life is resilience, and I’m old enough to make such a bald statement. We will always be knocked down. It’s the getting up that counts. By the time you reach upper middle age, you have started over, and over again.

And, I might add, resilience is the key to feeling 15 again. Which is actually how I feel most of the time.

But I am too old to try to change people. By now I’ve learned, the very hard way, that what you see in someone at the beginning is what you get forevermore. Most of us are receptive to a bit of behavior modification. But through decades of listening to people complain about marriages or lovers, I hear the same refrains.

I have come to realize that there is comfort in the predictability, even the ritualization, of relationship problems. They become a dance step; each partner can twirl through familiar moves, and do-si-do until the music stops.

Toxic people? Sour, spoiled people? I’m simply walking away; I have little fight left in me. It’s easier all around to accept that friendships have ebbs and flows, and indeed, there’s something quite beautiful about the organic nature of love.

I used to think that one didn’t make friends as one got older, but I’ve learned that the opposite happens. Sometimes, unaccountably, a new person walks into your life, and you find you are never too old to love again. And again. (See resilience.)

One is never too old for desire. Having entered the twilight of my dating years, I can tell you it is much easier to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of anticipation and disappointment when you’ve had plenty of experience with the shoals and eddies of shallow waters. Emphasis on shallow. By now, we know deep.

Take a pass on bad manners, on thoughtlessness, on unreliability, on carelessness and on all the other ways people distinguish themselves as unappealing specimens. Take a pass on your own unappealing behavior, too: the pining, yearning, longing and otherwise frittering away of valuable brainwaves that could be spent on Sudoku, or at least a jigsaw puzzle, if not that Beethoven sonata you loved so well in college.

My new mantra is liberating. At least once a week I encounter a situation that in the old (young) days would have knocked me to my knees or otherwise spun my life off center.

Now I can spot trouble 10 feet away (believe me, this is a big improvement), and I can say to myself: Too old for this. I spare myself a great deal of suffering, and as we all know, there is plenty of that to be had without looking for more.

If there can be such a thing as a best-selling app like Yo, which satisfies so many urges to boldly announce ourselves, I want one called 2old4this. A signature kiss-off to all that was once vexatious. A goodbye to all that has done nothing but hold us back. That would be an app worth having. But, thankfully, I’m too old to need such a thing.

 

Filed Under: Humor, Mainly Jane Tagged With: Aging, books, Dominique Browning, movies, New York Times

Comments

  1. margaret says

    September 17, 2015 at 12:33 pm

    Oh how I love this Jane!
    I’m sorry, I must steal this and make it new motto too.
    I am 59 1/2….a lot to love about it and a few things to not like.
    But overall I, like most people my age, wouldn’t want to be a millennial for anything in the world.
    I’m happy, somewhat healthy, and best of all still smitten with my husband.
    That ain’t all bad. :-)

    And as for books….I used to do the same, plow through no matter what.
    I love books. I love to hold them, smell them and of course read.
    Gone Girl did that for me. I hated these two characters so much I put the book down. But everyone was talking about it. So I went back and just read the final few chapters. I know, bad Margaret. But that was enough. When someone asked me why I didn’t like it. I said while it was well written, I just hated these characters so much I was thinking I didn’t give a rats arse what they did with their life they were maddening! That was the first time I never read the whole book in my life!

  2. Jane Heller says

    September 18, 2015 at 3:54 am

    It’s funny about Gone Girl. People either seem to find the two characters so objectionable and, therefore, unrelatable that they can’t stand the book or, like me, they raced through it to see what the end would bring. I loved it. I though Gillian Flynn did a great job keeping the twists and turns coming. But the point is it’s really liberating not to have to finish a book you aren’t enjoying. For the longest time, I would just slog through every single one and wish the experience could be over. Now, as Dominique Browning says, I’m too old for this! (It makes me smile to know you’re still smitten with your husband, btw.)

  3. Phyl D says

    November 18, 2015 at 10:17 am

    Dear Jane,

    Welcome back to Connecticut! My husband and I (both in our mid-50’s) have recently moved from Long Island, NY to CT to be closer to my family and it’s been a time of both many challenges and much joy.

    A number of years ago I wrote to you (by email) how much I enjoyed your books and how inspiring you have been to me in my own attempts at writing and you were gracious enough to take time out of your busy day to respond to me with much encouragement! You’re a class act, kiddo.

    I especially enjoy your movie blog entries and feel a kindred spirit at large….looking forward to much more of those and also to reading more of your books.

    I enjoyed reading the “I’m too old for this” article…what a shame we didn’t all feel this way in our twenties….oh, wait, actually, I did….I guess I just needed the extra years for my outsides to catch up with my insides. Of course, now that I m much older, it’s amazing what I no longer give a flying fig about….

    Remember back in the day when Yardley Cosmetics ran an ad campaign using the quote, “You’ve got to be young to get away with it” ?

    My new mantra is “You’ve got to be OLD to get away with it”, heh-heh….

    Oh, and last but not least, one of my dreams is to live in Santa Barbara one day. In the meantime, thanks for letting me vicariously enjoy that dream for a little while, through you.

    Wishing you and yours continued good health and wild success!

  4. Jane Heller says

    November 18, 2015 at 10:33 am

    What a lovely comment, Phyl D! Where in CT are you? Did you move anywhere in my neck of the woods (as in Litchfield County)? I’m so thrilled that you’ve enjoyed both my books and my blog posts. Lots more to come. Wasn’t that Dominique Browning piece smart and wise? I loved it and try to live by it (not always successfully). Santa Barbara is beautiful and I’m looking forward to going back for a couple of months this winter and seeing friends. Meanwhile, I’m sending your good wishes right back at you and thank you again for reaching out!

    P.S. You might want to sign up for my newsletter on my web site if you haven’t already. Once I get it going, I’ll be sending out updates that may not appear here.

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About Jane Heller

Jane Heller is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her fourteen breezy, witty novels of romantic comedy and suspense are now entertaining millions of readers around the world, along with her two books of nonfiction.

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