Want to Laugh? Read "Old Age: A Beginner's Guide," by Michael Kinsley

I'm always just a bit suspicious of books that promise to make me laugh.  I think it is because I like to be surprised by humorous moments, rather than feel duty-bound to chuckle, guffaw or giggle.  

Nonetheless, I succumbed to the promise in the blurb for Michael Kinsley's 2016 book, Old Age: A Beginner's Guide, that it was a "surprisingly cheerful book ... and a frequently funny account of one man's journey to the finish line."  

And I'm glad I did.  I did indeed laugh, and at the most surprising of moments, as when he described the need to avoid the doors of his refrigerator because of the magnets that might interfere with the technology in his brain used to keep symptom of Parkinson's Disease at bay.  He has the knack of making wry observations about his own mortal state to think broadly about what it is for all of us to age. I can see the short essays that make up this book being useful in a class on elder law or estate planning.  

His words are perhaps most poignantly relevant to boomers.  For example, on a goal of living longer, he writes:

Even before you're dead, you may want to ask yourself whether this is what you really want.  Is being alive all that desirable if you're alive only in the technical sense?  Millions of boomers are watching their parents fade until they are no longer there. As they approach their seventies, they start observing their own peer group losing their collective marbles, one at a time. And they  reasonably conclude that the real competition should not be about longevity. It should be about cognition.

But he doesn't stop there, exploring other, potentially more important goals for the competitive boomer generation to consider.  

This is a short, deep book.  And I recommend it, not least of all because it gives readers welcome opportunities to smile.