I’ll be turning 80 a little over a year from now so “You’re an old king from some vanished country,” is a line that really resonates with me. It reminds me of those old veterans revisiting Omaha Beach, or the USS Arizona. The youngsters honoring them may treat them with respect and admiration, but they can never really understand. When you are gone, everything, and everyone, you knew will be forgotten.

The best thing

The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.

The worst thing

The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it’s not, and also you’ve run out of illusions. People treat you like either you’ve solved something or you’ve lost something, and you haven’t. You see life repeating itself everywhere.

The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/opinion/trump-turns-80.html

Le Vieux Roi
Georges Rouault, 1936