Turning 60...

I have come to believe that wisdom is cynicism that has gathered enough evidence.

I turn 60 at the end of this month, and I am not exactly sure how that happened. Sixty used to sound old (my parents are in their 80s and they don’t seem old to me). It sounded like retirement parties, orthopedic shoes, weather complaints, falling asleep in a chair, and eating dinner before the sun went down. Now I am almost there, and I need to correct one thing. I love early dinners. The restaurant is quieter, the service is usually better, I can take my time, and I can be home at a reasonable hour to work on something, watch a game, read, write, or fall asleep in the chair if I feel like it. I have earned the right to stop pretending that staying out late automatically makes life more interesting.

That may be the greatest thing about turning 60. I have less interest in pretending. I no longer need to act impressed when I am not impressed. I do not need to pretend every new idea is revolutionary, every corporate mission statement is sincere, every famous person is fascinating, every trend deserves attention, or every confident person knows what the hell they are talking about. Maybe that is cynicism. Maybe it is wisdom. I have come to believe that wisdom is cynicism that has gathered enough evidence.

I have lived long enough to recognize patterns. I have watched greed become growth, layoffs become restructuring, surveillance become convenience, propaganda become messaging, and taxpayer giveaways become public-private partnerships. I have watched institutions preach accountability while building systems to avoid it. I have watched executives fail upward, politicians attack systems they have benefited from their entire careers, companies talk about loyalty while treating employees as disposable, and people condemn behavior in their enemies while excusing the exact same behavior in their friends. At some point, you either learn from the pattern or volunteer to be fooled again.

Major League Baseball’s “Leveling the Playing Field” commercials are a perfect example. The league is not educating fans. It is beginning its campaign for the next labor fight, choosing the language, framing the problem, and positioning the players as the obstacle before most fans even realize negotiations have started. What bothers me almost as much is how little the players have responded. Silence is not neutral when the other side owns the microphone.

Baseball is only one example. The same manipulation exists in politics, business, medicine, media, technology, education, and almost every institution with enough money to hire people who specialize in telling the public what to think. At 30, I was more likely to accept the message. At nearly 60, I want to know who paid for it, why they are telling me this now, what they want from me, who benefits, what they are leaving out, and why fairness suddenly becomes urgent when powerful people want someone else to sacrifice. Those questions have made me more cynical, but they have also made me harder to manipulate.

I work in business. I deal with companies, distributors, contracts, negotiations, regulations, partnerships, product launches, and people who use words like “alignment” when they really mean they want you to accept their terms. I have met brilliant people and complete frauds. I have met people who care deeply about their work and people who care mainly about looking important while somebody else does it. I have watched simple decisions become six meetings, three spreadsheets, two presentations, and a month of email because nobody wants to take responsibility. Age has not made me less interested in business. It has made me less impressed by corporate theater. Tell me what the product does, whether it helps anyone, what it costs, who is responsible, and whether you will do what you said you would do. The rest is usually decoration.

I am writing more. I am working on sewing machines. I am learning glove making. I am shooting photography. I am buying, cleaning, researching, and selling old cameras, tools, stereo equipment, sewing machines, oil cans, baseball gloves, and whatever else catches my attention. I still love baseball, ballparks, travel, history, and the strange ways the game connects to the culture around it. I am still curious, and that matters more to me than appearing young. And hanging with my partner, we understand each other, we are connected in a way that makes me feel complete.

I do not want to become one of those people who reaches a certain age and decides there is nothing left to learn. I want to keep finding things I know nothing about. I want to take something apart and discover I have no idea how to put it back together. I want to become terrible at something new and stay with it long enough to become competent. I want to make things with my hands, understand how things work, use the cameras instead of merely owning them, finish the writing instead of endlessly planning it, and follow an interest even when there is no obvious financial reason to do it.

Not every hobby needs to become a business. Not every interest needs to be monetized. Not every photograph needs to become content. Not every ballgame needs to become a story. Not every experience needs to be documented as proof that it happened. Sometimes I want to do something simply because I enjoy doing it. That should be enough.

Modern life seems determined to convince us that nothing is enough unless it can be measured, packaged, optimized, marketed, and sold. A walk must produce steps. A hobby must produce income. A trip must produce photographs. A photograph must produce engagement. A thought must produce a post. A meal must become a review. A quiet afternoon must be justified as self-care because apparently we are no longer permitted to sit still without assigning it a purpose. I am tired of that. I do not need every hour of my life to demonstrate productivity.

I have spent enough years believing everything required immediate attention. The email needed an answer. The opportunity needed pursuing. The phone needed checking. The problem needed solving. The misunderstanding needed correcting. The argument needed winning. The idea needed turning into a plan before it disappeared. Everything felt urgent.

Now a week feels like a day, a month feels like a week, and a year feels like a few months. That may be the strangest part of getting older. Childhood summers lasted forever. Christmas took years to arrive. A school year felt like an entire lifetime. Now the calendar seems to flip itself. Opening Day becomes the All-Star break, the All-Star break becomes October, the holidays arrive, and suddenly it is spring again. The years are not walking anymore. They are running.

You would think that would make everything feel more urgent. It has done the opposite. Most things feel less urgent now because I have learned that urgency is often manufactured. Urgency makes us click, buy, panic, accept bad terms, and confuse somebody else’s anxiety with our responsibility. It keeps us permanently available to companies, devices, institutions, and people who have not earned immediate access to us. Breaking news. Limited availability. Final opportunity. Respond today. Act now. Do not miss out.

At nearly 60, I am comfortable missing out. Most of what I have missed was not worth catching. My sense of urgency has not disappeared. It has narrowed. Health matters. Family matters. A person in genuine trouble matters. A promise matters. Doing the right thing when it carries a cost matters. Most of the rest can wait until tomorrow, or at least until after my early dinner.

The phone can ring. The email can sit unanswered. The internet can survive without my opinion for several hours. The machine can remain in pieces on the bench overnight. The article can be finished tomorrow. The decision can breathe. Most things improve when I do not react immediately.

I am also less concerned with winning every argument. There was a time when being misunderstood felt like an emergency. I needed to explain myself, correct the record, make the other person understand, and get them to admit I was right. I no longer believe everyone is capable of understanding, especially when misunderstanding serves them better. Some people are not looking for the truth. They are looking for confirmation. Some arguments are not disagreements. They are performances. Some questions are not questions. They are traps with punctuation marks. Some people do not want an explanation. They want another opportunity to exhaust you. At 60, I am more willing to let them remain wrong.

I am less interested in being universally liked. Universal approval is usually purchased by saying almost nothing. I would rather say what I believe and accept that some people will not like it. I do not need every bridge to remain open. Some bridges were burned for good reason. Some people will only cross them to bring another can of gasoline. I do not believe every relationship must be saved, that history obligates us to continue tolerating what damages us, or that forgiveness requires renewed access.

Age has made me more selective about what deserves repair. That applies to relationships, work, old objects, and myself. Some things can be restored. Some things should be left behind. The wisdom is knowing the difference.

I have less patience for excuses now, but more patience for honest mistakes. There is a difference. I can forgive someone who says, “I was wrong.” I have great difficulty trusting someone who says, “I am sorry you were offended,” and then spends 20 minutes explaining why none of it was really their fault. Character is not revealed by a polished apology. It is revealed by accepting consequences.

It is easy to be honest when honesty costs nothing. It is easy to be generous when generosity is publicly rewarded. It is easy to defend a principle when your own money, comfort, reputation, or opportunity is not at risk. The test comes when doing the right thing has a price. That is what I pay attention to now. Not what people claim to value, but what they are willing to lose in order to honor it.

That is why I am suspicious of institutions that speak constantly about values. The more an organization advertises its integrity, the more interested I become in how it behaves when nobody is watching. Values are not the words painted on the conference-room wall. They are the decisions made when the decision is expensive. I have watched too many organizations protect reputations before people, too many leaders demand accountability from everyone below them and flexibility for themselves, and too many powerful people present themselves as victims the moment anyone questions their power.

So yes, I am cynical, but I am not hopeless. I still believe in people. I believe in craftspeople who redo hidden work nobody else would have noticed. I believe in nurses who remain with frightened patients after their shift should have ended. I believe in small-business owners who accept a loss rather than cheat a customer. I believe in friends who tell you the truth when a lie would be easier. I believe in people who keep their word when breaking it would be more profitable. I believe in people who admit they were wrong without attaching a speech full of excuses.

Those people keep me from giving up on the entire human operation. Cynicism says everyone is terrible. Experience says some people are. Wisdom says pay attention. I am trying to pay attention.

I am also trying to be more patient with myself. For much of my life, I believed there was a finished version of me somewhere ahead. The next job, project, trip, relationship, achievement, purchase, or opportunity would finally make everything fall into place. That person does not exist. There is no completed version of me waiting at the end.

There is only this version. Turning 60. Living in Milwaukee. Working in business. Writing. Making gloves. Restoring sewing machines. Shooting film. Watching baseball. Buying things I sometimes have no business buying. Starting more projects than any reasonable person should start. Trying to make sense of the world without letting it drain all the wonder out of me.

I do not feel finished. I do not feel old. I do not feel particularly wise. I feel less available for nonsense. Less available for artificial deadlines, performative outrage, one-sided relationships, corporate morality, people who want honesty only when it confirms what they already believe, powerful institutions demanding trust they have not earned, and bullshit dressed in professional language.

I am more available for curiosity, quiet mornings, slow work, conversations that do not need to produce anything, people who are direct, competent, interesting, and kind, changing my mind, beginning something new, and an early dinner.

I turn 60 at the end of this month. The years are moving faster, but the clock is not frightening me. It is clarifying me. I do not need to hurry through everything. I need to stop wasting time on what does not matter.

I want fewer false emergencies and more deliberate choices. I want less noise and more curiosity. I want less performance and more workmanship. I want fewer slogans and more truth. I want to make things, write things, photograph things, fix things, and see people clearly without losing the ability to be surprised by them.

Fuck this was long… why did you read all this shit.