Woody Allen

In an interview on Wednesday, Woody Allen, 74, was asked how he felt about aging. Well, I'm against it. [laughs] You don't gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens. People try and put a nice varnish on it, and say, well, you mellow. You come to understand life and accept things. But you'd trade all of that for being 35 again.

I'm not any smarter now than I was at 35, but if the substantial and varied experience I've gained since then hasn't made me wise, it has at least made me wiser. It's also true that I can't do as many push-ups now as I could when I was 35 (in fact, I can't do any now), but I'm not disintegrating. In some respects I'm in better shape than I was then. I'm exercising regularly and maintaining a more sensible weight, and my hypertension is finally under control. Maybe I'm kidding myself and maybe my doctor would disagree, but I consider myself reasonably fit. No, I'm not falling apart, but I will concede that I don't have the energy and strength of 35.

Woody Allen seems not to have accepted with good grace his getting older and it's probably true that he hasn't mellowed either. As for me, I'm still impatient and nervous, but I'm less impatient and nervous, and fewer things bother me than used to be the case. Have I come to understand life? No. But I think I understand it better than I did. And I have accepted, even welcomed, becoming old. Aging is a normal part of development and I want to continue developing. Returning to 35 would be a regression.

Perhaps many oldsters would agree with Woody Allen and trade, were it possible, the benefits of old age for the chance to be 35 again. But not me. At 35 I was so absorbed in my career and my young children that I wasn't conscious of much else. I was unable to stand still for even a minute to appreciate the wonder and joy of life. Ever since seeing the recent revival of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, I've been thinking about the question posed by Emily's ghost: Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?

This morning, as I walked in Prospect Park and watched the grim twenty and thirty somethings jogging along, often checking their watches as they did so, I wondered if any of them appreciates how wonderful it is simply to be alive. I didn't at that stage of my development. But if age has given me anything, it's the ability to savor life, to take pleasure in being present. I find this an adequate compensation for the loss of youth's strength and energy. Yes, I disagree with Woody Allen, but that won't stop me from seeing his newest film.