The Inner Pilgrim

Today I turned 74.

Now, if you’re 24, that probably sounds ancient. If you’re 74, it sounds suspiciously young. Turning 74 got me thinking about what life looked like when I was 24.

At 24, if a bar in New York City closed at 4 a.m., I considered that a personal challenge. Today, if I’m out at 9:30 p.m., my wife Ellen calls to make sure I haven’t been kidnapped.

At 24, I traveled through Europe with a backpack, a Eurail pass, and about $400 to my name. Somewhere along the way I met two Belgian girls, and for several glorious weeks we traveled together. My biggest problem wasn’t finding a hotel; it was trying not to fall in love with either one of them. The world seemed impossibly new that summer. Every train station was an invitation. Every stranger was a potential friend. Every wrong turn became a story.

At 74, I still travel to Europe. The difference is that now I know what a hotel reservation is. And if the room doesn’t have a private bathroom, I’m not calling it an adventure—I’m calling it grounds for a refund.

At 24, I landed a job as a clerk on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange through a combination of confidence, charm, and outright bluffing. About an hour into my first day, the boss tapped me on the shoulder. “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you?” “No,” I admitted. He stared at me. “I’ll give you three weeks. Shape up or you’re fired.”

A year later I asked why he hadn’t fired me that first day. He smiled. “Because what you did is exactly what I would have done.”

At 24, I rode a motorcycle through New York traffic. At 74, I no longer ride a motorcycle. Not because I’ve become wiser, but because my wife has.

At 24, I lived in a tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn Heights. One morning, walking home after an all-night adventure, I turned a corner and literally bumped into Norman Mailer. Norman Mailer! One of the most famous writers in America. At 74, I no longer bump into famous authors on the street; I see them at lectures from the back row, usually while wondering whether the parking meter has expired.

And here’s another difference. At 24, I was paying a psychoanalyst in Manhattan to help me figure myself out. At 74, I’m still doing the work—only now I’ve discovered that self-understanding is not a destination. It’s a daily practice.

What strikes me isn’t that my life is smaller today; it’s just different. At 24, I collected experiences; at 74, I collect meaning. At 24, I wanted excitement; at 74, I want connection. At 24, I thought wisdom was knowing the answers; at 74, I’ve learned wisdom is knowing the questions.

And yet, some things haven’t changed. I still love a good story. I still love meeting interesting people. I still believe that around the next corner something unexpected might happen.

The difference is that at 24 I expected adventure to arrive on a motorcycle. At 74, I know it can arrive in a conversation, a friendship, my daughter’s laugh, a book, or a quiet moment when life suddenly makes sense.

When I was 24, I couldn’t imagine being 74. And now that I’m 74, I can honestly say something surprising: I wouldn’t trade places with that young man. Well—maybe for one weekend. Just definitely not the morning after.

The principal made the introduction. “Young people,” he said, “I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America.”

King was floored. He had not expected that term to be applied to him. He was, in fact, put off by it at first. He had flown in from another continent, had dined with the prime minister. He did not see the connection, did not see what the Indian caste system had to do directly with him, did not immediately see why the lowest-caste people in India would view him, an American Negro and a distinguished visitor, as low-caste like themselves, see him as one of them. “For a moment,” he wrote, “I was a bit shocked and peeved that I would be referred to as an untouchable.”

Then he began to think about the reality of the lives of the people he was fighting for—20 million people, consigned to the lowest rank in America for centuries, “still smothering in an airtight cage of poverty,” quarantined in isolated ghettoes, exiled in their own country.

And he said to himself, “Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable.”

In that moment, he realized that the Land of the Free had imposed a caste system not unlike the caste system of India and that he had lived under that system all of his life. It was what lay beneath the forces he was fighting in America.