It was bound to happen. I just didn’t think it would be today. Or this year. Or this decade.

This morning, at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, as Sandy and I were going through security on the way home from vacation, the friendly and patient young woman from TSA who was stationed at the conveyor belt told me I could put my carry-on in one bin and everything else in another. We didn’t check bags, and I was wearing some of the bulkier items on my person, such as my sport coat, rain jacket and hiking boots, to save room in the roller bag. I asked her if I needed to remove both my rain jacket and my sport coat; she said, “the jacket goes in the bin” and that I could keep my sport coat on.

Then she looked at me and casually added, “Any knee or hip replacements, or pacemaker?” I laughed hard out loud and said in a strong and upbeat voice, “Not yet!” She said “Okay, the scanner is over there. Have a good day.”

Stunned, I went through the walk-through scanner and when I met up with Sandy on the other side, I told her what had just happened.

Clearly, I have crossed some new aging-related threshold. Has this happened to you?

I’ve made it almost to 64—I’ll be 64 in 91 days as of this writing—and already I look old enough to have prompted the security question I was completely not expecting. I kept asking Sandy, “What do I look like, that she would have asked me that?” Sandy replied, “Well, with your hat and sport coat like that, you do look a bit like someone trying to cultivate that ‘English country gentleman’ look.” I submit to you Exhibit A, the photo Sandy took of exactly how I am dressed at the time of writing this.

Maybe my concept of “cool” or “distinguished” actually translates to “older” or, at least, and this would make this situation more understandable, “older than I thought it did.” So then I wondered: is this sort of like the opposite of getting carded? When you go to Trader Joe’s and try to buy alcohol, they ask for your ID if you look like you’re under 40. In my (new) case, do the TSA people have a regulation where they have to ask you if you’ve had a hip replacement if you look like you’re at least 50? 60? 70? Do they leave it to the agent’s discretion? Did I perhaps look older and distinguished but was walking well enough to make her wonder if I’d had surgery? In any case, what does this morning’s events say about the way or ways in which I presented to the world on May 31, 2026, relative to what has happened to me before?

On the plane, I remembered a study that was released about 15 years ago (turns out it was done by the Pew Trust), where they studied people’s chronological ages and the ages that those people “felt” they were. The contrast was striking. Many people over 65 report that they feel younger than they are. Some follow-ups to the Pew work suggest that people over 50 generally feel about 20% younger than their actual years around the sun. Since I’m 63 and three-quarters years old, that translates to “feeling” exactly 51 years old. Yup, that’s about right. I’m energetic, quite healthy, vigorous, and reasonably good-looking, at least in my own estimation in the mirror. (I actually believe that I look better than I did at 51, if you ignore the changes in my formerly formidable curly brown locks.) Another study says that looking in your own mirror straight ahead, as opposed to from an angle, lessens the look of sags and wrinkles, thereby further contributing to the common delusion in self-perception that these researchers have been finding in how old people feel as opposed to how old they are.

And there’s another thing. My year of being 63 has been a year when, for the first time, I have pretty continuously had the experience of more than one thing being physically “wrong with me” at the same time. This was new. Thanks to my acupuncturist and some yoga and tai chi, the situation has improved somewhat, to what I might describe as one ongoing malady and several other minor bothers. I imagine that some of you will laugh at this (I can see the faces of the more devilish of you in my mind’s eye): “Ha! Just wait!” But my vain foppishness aside, I do see, more clearly now, one of the gifts of older adulthood that I have heard described elsewhere: that, as we age, we also have the opportunity to accept that some aches simply won’t go away, not completely, not ever; that those wrinkles just don’t matter; that kindness and care and loving relationships and enjoying right where you are right now, with the people you are with right now, appreciating what we do have (this day, this breath), are the things that really matter. This does make more sense to me, and it does feel more like this is possible to cultivate more deliberately. I have a pretty strong sense of wonder anyway, and it would be delightful to pair it with a sense that it’s really okay to have things be just as they are—even if there are things in the world worth fighting for, in which case we get up and fight.

Maybe… probably… certainly… it has always been like this, and it just takes circumstances to slap you (in this case, me) upside the head to awaken us to the way that it is?

While Sandy and I were on vacation in the Thousand Islands of Canada, I got deeply relaxed. There were several days when we did very little beyond walking, exploring the area a wee bit, but mostly talking, reading books, and drinking coffee while looking out the windows of our cottage at the St. Lawrence River just outside. (Here is a photo of where we were.) It got quiet enough inside me to be able to have some new perspective on my inner makeup, some detachment of cognitive distance from the various “parts” that make up a personality. I’ve done some of this work in therapy and in meditation, but I found a few new dimensions this time. One aspect that I found is what I might call—having worked in advertising, I like catchy names—my “Super Controlling Part.” This part has a rather large self-assigned mission. Maybe you have a part like this, too.

Anyway, my “guy” wants to be able to control: (a) what other people do (not such a bad fit if you’re a choral conductor); (b) how they do it (this is a little trickier); (c) how they feel about it (uh oh), and he also wants to be able to control (d) how other people react to the first three. Obviously, this kind of wiring, when you combine attempting to control all of these things, can tie you in knots, which happens to me not infrequently.

When this part of my personality collided with the TSA lady this morning, this resulted in a huge loss of control. This Super Controlling Part had virtually no agency in the situation at the airport. He couldn’t control her perception of how I looked. He couldn’t control her mental calculus (the thought process that had her conclude my estimated age). He couldn’t control her mental connection between my estimated age and her need to ask if I had any replacement parts installed.

Dang! To use basketball language—it’s the NBA Finals and I’m rooting for the Spurs—my part just got left on the sidelines. He can’t even sub in late in the fourth quarter, like a fully rested power forward, and try to alter the direction of the game. He just got dunked over his head.

Nothing he can do about it.  

Let me be clear. There is no sense of insult here, no sense of injury. I don’t feel “aged,” as in being the object of ageism, by the TSA lady, not diminished or made to feel lessened as a human being. My self-esteem is intact.

I’m just kind of stunned at the size of the gap between (1) my self-delusion of feeling cool and sporty, with the implications for youthfulness that I associate with feeling cool and sporty, and (2) being asked if I have after-market parts anywhere in my body.

I’m reminded of a few sentences that are attributed to the Buddha that are relevant here, what are called the Five Remembrances:

1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

I’ve been slowly and gradually learning more about the Buddha’s teachings since the pandemic, and every now and then something will happen that sort of shakes me awake, like what happened this morning in Buffalo. As suggested in the blog post “Bhuddisms Five Remembrances Are Wake-Up Calls for Us All,”: “Don’t look away.” For me, having had it just confirmed by the TSA lady that there’s no way to escape growing old, no way to escape having ill health or to escape death or change or loss, I’m indeed left with what I say and what I do; those are my legacy, those are my contribution to the world.

For some reason, now that I’ve recalled this teaching, for the first time in my life I can actually envision a day when I might actually have a knee replacement or something else, and, at least from where I’m currently viewing that prospect, it’s not scary. I can imagine going through security and having a nice young person ask if I’ve got any of those things and just saying calmly, with a friendly smile, “Yes,” and going through security some other way. Some of you already do this. I’ll be joining you in that response, somewhere down the road.

We’re all in this together.