AARP Bulletin - April 2012

In the Know ; Opinion

I’m back at work: ‘How dull it is to pause’

On Not Growing Old By Bill Moyers

Inever thought much about growing old. Most of us in journalism are too obsessed with the here and now to think about the past or future tense of our lives. Growing old happened only at the end of the trip, like arriving at the depot after a long train ride.

At 60, I had open heart surgery. Four months later I was reporting in the field again.

I turned 65 and kept working.

I retired on my 70th birthday and came back to work a year later. I retired again on the eve of my 76th birthday, and a year later was back at work.

In each case “work” is a weekly television series with implacable deadlines, constant reading, relentless preparation, intense sessions in the studio and long hours in editing rooms. Once you finish one broadcast, you begin crafting the next. Television is insatiable. There’s creative tension in the perpetual tug of a looming deadline.

talking to some of the wisest and sanest people around: philosophers, physicists, novelists, activists, historians, poets, neuroscientists, biologists, teachers, scholars of every stripe. And I’ve had the chance to ask some of them the most important questions in the world: Why is there something instead of nothing? What do we mean by a moral life? What’s the source of hate? Can we learn to be creative?

It is impossible to listen to such people without realizing in one’s own consciousness a stirring of fresh life. Every one of them taught me something.

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Cronkite’s advice: ‘Keep going’

My wife, Judith, a journalist in her own right and my creative partner in all our productions, says we have no retirement skills. Maybe in three years, on our 60th anniversary, we’ll try to learn some. On the other hand, I’m not so sure. Retirement, I’ve heard, can be the enemy of longevity.

Walter Cronkite retired at 65. He later told me it had
been a serious mistake. “I’ve missed it every minute,”
he said. And then he added: “Keep going!”
Like Walter, I love the work. Especially the teamwork.

Genes help. My father almost made it to 90. My mother did—plus two. Her mother—my grandmother—almost became the first centenarian in the family.

But I’m confident it’s the nature of the work that keeps me getting up every day. I’ve been at it a long time now—since I was a cub reporter at age 16 on my hometown newspaper. I worked my way through the University of Texas as a reporter for the local television station. We were the first station in the state to buy a station wagon, paint it red and christen it—what else?— Red Rover. I wheeled around town in style, broadcasting from crime scenes and accidents and the state legislature, which some people said was the biggest crime scene in town.

My path led me on to graduate school, to government service for seven years and then back to journalism, which became a continuing course in adult education—my own. Most important, journalism provided me a passport into the world of ideas, which became my favorite beat.

I’ve enjoyed the occasionally intimidating privilege of

I’m learning a whole new medium
So I’ve had a wonderful life in this work, and
even on its most exhausting days, journalism
keeps my curiosity on
its toes. I’m also learn-
ing a whole new me-
dium from the young
people who created
and are running our
website, BillMoyers
.com. When I started
as a journalist, my sto-
ries were transformed
into print on an an-
cient linotype machine in the noisy and smelly
back shop of the newspaper; who would have
thought that 60 years later I would be sending
them on video into the far reaches of cyberspace?

Moyers & Company—our present series—will end shortly before my 80th birthday. Then what? We’ll see. Maybe we’ll get to the one series Judith and I keep talking about but have never gotten around to producing: a series on aging. We’re fascinated by what science and experience are discovering about how to maintain high mental and physical ability as we grow older; how to reduce the risk of disease and disability; why attitude matters; and the importance of wonder, surprise and joy.