Aging & Wisdom Quote by John Burroughs

Old age, in Burroughs's hands, isn’t a number on a calendar; it’s a moving target that keeps a respectful distance from the self. The line is funny because it’s a little cowardly, and true because it’s almost involuntary: we preserve the feeling of being mid-story by relocating “old” to a safer decade ahead. Burroughs turns denial into a neat measurement device, exposing how identity clings to continuity even as the body negotiates change.

The subtext is sharper than the gentle phrasing suggests. “Old age” is less a biological fact than a cultural verdict, a label that threatens to demote you from participant to spectator. By insisting it’s always “ten years older,” he’s confessing how status works: old is what happens to other people, the ones you’re allowed to ignore. That small gap is the psychological buffer that lets you keep planning, desiring, and taking yourself seriously. It’s also a quiet critique of how societies weaponize age categories, using them to decide who counts as current.

Context matters: Burroughs was a late-19th/early-20th century naturalist-essayist, a profession built on attentive observation and, often, on long life as proof of wisdom. His joke is a self-administered field note: the mind’s instinct is to normalize the present self and exile decline into the near future. Ten years is close enough to be plausible, far enough to be survivable. That’s the mechanism, and it’s why the line lands with a wince of recognition.