From the NY Times

Peter Wu

15 January 2013

I don’t need to try life at 60 because I am 77 going on 78 so I am closer to ‘Western Sky’ than the Eastern Sky.

When I finally turn 80, I will tell you what it’s like to be 80, if I live to 80 that is.

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You Think 40 Is No Picnic? Try Life at 60

Published: January 11, 2013

To the Editor:

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Re “For Each Age, Its Agonies,” by Frank Bruni (column, Jan. 8):

Wait until you try 60 on for size. This is when you understand that if business success has not somehow fallen in your lap, it will take a miracle for it to appear from this point forward.

When illusions concerning your physical being begin to recede even quicker than the few remaining hairs on your head. When the thought of dying is somehow no longer quite the abstraction it was before.

When you are most likely a child now who no longer has parents, or if one is still alive, you are witness to his or her physical or mental dissolve, or quite possibly both.

When you realize that your jokes are funny only to you.

Wherever one is on the journey through life, that is the moment that appears more intense than any other age could possibly be.

If I am lucky, I will get past 60, and when I find myself at 70, look back and wonder what all the noise was about. Just as I did in all the decades before.

ROBERT S. NUSSBAUM
Fort Lee, N.J., Jan. 8, 2013