MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The writer Anne Lamott turned 70 in April, and it turns out she has a lot to say about growing older - like this. Quote, "we know by a certain age the great palace lies of the culture. If you buy or do or achieve this or that, you will be happy and rich. Nope, love and service make us rich." Well, Anne Lamott has been collecting her insights in columns over the past year for The Washington Post. So we called her up, and she shared that even in her still-full, still-active life, she is grateful for something that has dropped away - perfectionism.
ANNE LAMOTT: I used to care a lot more about what my butt looks like - you know...
KELLY: (Laughter).
LAMOTT: ...And how everybody feels about me, and I don't anymore.
KELLY: Yeah.
LAMOTT: Let me tell you a quick story that I really live by. When my very best friend since high school was dying of breast cancer and we went into a store, she was in a wheelchair, with a wig on, about a month before she died, and I was buying a cute, little dress for the current fixer-upper boyfriend. And I came out, and it was tighter than I'm used to. I usually dress like John Goodman. And I said to her, do you think this makes me look big in the thighs? And she looked at me, and she said, Annie, you don't have that kind of time. And I think one of the great blessings of getting older is that you realize this. By my age, I've lost a lot of really precious and sometimes younger friends. And boy, is that a wake-up call to start making some smarter choices about how you're going to spend this one precious and fleeting life.
KELLY: Yeah - and wear the dress you want to wear.
LAMOTT: Yeah.
KELLY: (Laughter) And everybody else can just deal with it - yeah.
LAMOTT: Or the big, welcoming pants that are forgiving about what you had for lunch.
KELLY: What you're describing - there's so much gentleness in it towards yourself. There's so much gentleness towards others in these columns. Which of those do you find harder?
LAMOTT: I think gentleness towards oneself and forgiveness towards oneself and just radical self-love is the very hardest work we do. When Bill Wilson was getting AA started in the '30s, he had a priest friend who wasn't actually an alcoholic. And the priest friend said to Bill, sometimes I think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses, and I have learned to put on those pair of glasses and to look at how touching people are and how hard everybody's life has been - what rough edges life involves and how heroically they've tried to rise to the occasion.
KELLY: Anne Lamott, for folks listening to you right now, for whom getting older feels so far away - maybe people who recognize their parents and their grandparents in what you're talking about - is there anything you would wish them to take away from this?
LAMOTT: Yes, that it is definitely hard and confusing to get older. And it really - as they say, it isn't for wusses. And my body is not what it was. You know, a lot of things hurt. And my mind - I have what I like to think of as age-appropriate cognitive decline, but I am spaced out. And some days, it does feel like there's a sniper in the trees, picking off people I can't live without. But by the same token, life just keeps on giving. And it's such a beautiful thing to have been given a human life - aches and pains and spacing out and all - and you will be amazed by how much you love it if you put on those better pair of glasses and you start looking around for all that still works, no matter how much has been taken away.
KELLY: I want to finish with one last quote. This is from your column this week.
LAMOTT: Oh, OK - which I don't even remember, but you have it right there.
KELLY: (Laughter) Yeah, I've got it. OK...
LAMOTT: So not my problem.
KELLY: ...I'll read it to you.
LAMOTT: Yeah, not my problem.
KELLY: What you wrote is...
(Reading) My pastor said you can trap bees at the bottom of a mason jar without a lid because they don't look up and fly away. So I look up. Today, darker fog covers the lower part of the mountain but becomes a soft, heathery gray where it meets the deep green of the hills.
So my question, Anne Lamott - when you look up today, right now, what do you see?
LAMOTT: I see a very blue sky. I see the trees around me beginning to change color. Oh, that's so touching. And I see my dog, right now, racing toward me. And I see that a friend is on her way over to take me to Target. And I couldn't be happier today...
KELLY: (Laughter).
LAMOTT: And I've just loved talking to you.
KELLY: And I to you. Anne Lamott, thank you so much.
LAMOTT: Thank you so much.
KELLY: Anne Lamott - her latest book is "Somehow: Thoughts On Love," and her columns on aging appear in The Washington Post.
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