Roger's Rules For Aging

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NEVER WORK FOR ANYONE MORE INSECURE THAN YOURSELF There is a long list of people for whom one should never go to work--crooks, racists, liars--but the most dangerous of the lot are those who are in over their heads. Anyone who feels inadequate to a position of authority will inevitably: a) trust the wrong people for advice; b) betray you at the drop of a name; c) mess up the whole enterprise and throw everyone into unemployment. Such people may not mean to do any of those things, but they are driven, night and day, by a fear of exposure. They know that they are inept; you know that they are inept; they know that you know it. Better always to work for a competent tyrant. I am self-employed. (Rule 41)

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE--UNLESS YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE SOMEONE ELSE However excellent you are at what you do, you still may wish to be someone else. Go ahead. Authenticity is prized in our culture only insofar as how attractive the authentic being is. If you really don't like who you are, you may be right. (Rule 46)

NEVER THINK ON VACATION... If it were possible to park one's mind at the gate of a resort or wherever one goes on vacation--the way cowboys were made to park their six-guns at the gates of Dodge City--holidays would never be lethally dangerous. Since that is not possible, do the next best thing: Don't think. Keep the mind in its safe and stupid mode, the way you like it when on vacation. Aren't these peaches the best? (Rule 49)

APOLOGIZE, RECONCILE, GIVE HELP I told you these rules were easy. (Rule 58)

DO NOT GO TO YOUR LEFT Going to one's left--or working on going to one's left--is a basketball term for strengthening one's weakness. A right-handed player will improve his game considerably if he learns to dribble and shoot with his left hand and to move to his left on the court. What is true for basketball, however, is not true for living. In life, if you attempt to compensate for a weakness, you will usually grow weaker. If, on the other hand (the right one), you keep playing to your strength, people will not notice that you have weaknesses. Of course, you probably do not believe this. You will want to take singing lessons anyway.

Establish your strength and strengthen it. English critic Hilaire Belloc advised that a young and aspiring writer "concentrate on one subject. Let him, when he is 20, write about the earthworm. Let him continue for 40 years to write of nothing but the earthworm. When he is 60, pilgrims will make a hollow path with their feet to the door of the world's great authority on the earthworm. They will knock at his door and humbly beg to be allowed to see the Master of the Earthworm." (Rule 16)

LIVE IN THE PAST, BUT DON'T REMEMBER TOO MUCH One only has to explain this rule to people under 50. The first part is, in a way, unnecessary. It is impossible to live in any tense but the past. The present moves too fast; the future is the future. In Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, the fortune-teller says, "I tell the future. Nothing easier. But who can tell you your past, eh? Nobody!" For myself, I increasingly find that the past is where I most want to be. You may feel the same way. (Rule 52)

Roger Rosenblatt's book Rules for Aging will be published by Harcourt in October 2000