Seeing Both Sides Now. Again.

Joni Mitchell plays Newport and rocks it.

There she was, Joni Mitchell, on the Newport Folk Festival stage, surrounded by musicians, in a regal chair, singing the songs so many of us grew up on. Her first public performance in seven years, after having to relearn how to walk, sing and play guitar after suffering a brain aneurysm. It was her first full-length set in more than 20 years. She rocked the festival with her courage, her honesty and her art. It was impossible to listen without being moved to tears.

But for me it was also deeply disorienting to see an icon of my own youth on stage so clearly old and disabled, no matter how brave and resilient. In my mind’s eye, she’s still in her early 30’s, which makes me 17, and we are both there forever and unchanging—perfect, youthful, our futures only in front of us.

Appearing on stage last week, surrounded by younger musicians who clearly venerated her, Joni Mitchell challenged the notion that to age is to be only diminished and increasingly invisible. By claiming her rightful place in the center of that stage in the center of that festival, where she first appeared in 1967, her performance confirmed her continued value both as an elder and as an artist. “Listen to me,” her voice commanded, “I’ve still got plenty to say to all of you.”

When she sang:

“I’ve looked at life from both sides now

From win and lose and still somehow

It’s life’s illusions that I recall

I really don’t know life at all,”

I couldn’t help but reflect on how meaningful those words were to me then and to me now. As a teenager, I was trying to make sense of adulthood, knowing that I’d left childhood behind; Today, I watch my own children grow into adults, my friends retire, and all of the members of my parents’ generation die. If anything, that uncertainty and that fluidity, that sense that everything solid drifts away like clouds, has only expanded as I’ve grown older.

I find it infuriating when older people are characterized as ‘cute’ or spoken down to or condescended to. To me, the people who make it to old age are admirable and fierce. We owe them our respect.

As an estate planner, I’ve watched many people drift away into confusion, losing their cognitive capacities—some gradually and others quickly. Lifetimes of achievements and accolades are forgotten in the daily struggle to remember the simplest of things—the names of their children, the day of the week, the reason for our meetings. And even that confusion can come and go. I will never forget the time a woman who was clearly lost suddenly looked at me, clearly, and thanked me for my patience in explaining to things to her. “It’s hard,” she said, “to understand today, thank you for repeating things to me.”

I’ve seen so many people struggle through illness and physical diminishment—doing their best to remain capable in the face of debilitating weakness: the 90 year old and her best friend in her 80’s who went out every week (until they couldn’t) to do bodywork for strength and flexibility; the retired engineer whose current joy was working as a crossing guard for the elementary school down the street; the woman whose passion for genealogical research filled 30 volumes over 10 years; the woman who carried her oxygen equipment in a beautiful Japanese basket as she walked; the men determined to flirt well into their 90’s, much to the horror of their adult children.

Mostly I see tremendous strength and resolve, like Joni’s, to carry on despite it all, for as long as it is possible to do so, even in the face of old age, sickness, and, eventually (of course) death.

When she sang:

“Oh, but now old friends they’re acting strange

And they shake their heads and they tell me that I’ve changed

Well something’s lost, but something’s gained

In living every day,”

I thought to myself, how on earth could she have written that song in her twenties?! She captures the sentiment I’ve seen so often, and what makes it a privilege to work with people as they reach the end of their lives—a kind of grace in knowing that all we ever have is this day, and, if we are lucky, the next.