I hit 70 next January 8, and was interested in this piece:

John Derbyshire writes in Taki’s Magazine:

“Making it to seventy is not much nowadays. ‘Seventy is the new fifty,’ my friends assure me. As the scriptural limit, though, seventy is a good point at which to take stock, to look back and get some idea of the shape of one’s life.”

http://takimag.com/article/follow_heart_whatever_desire_john_derbyshire/print#ixzz3bjWXNady

“As the scriptural limit …” Well, yes and no.

“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” – Psalm 90:10.

Nobody knows what that 70 “days of our years” means. Used to be, explainers would say, “Well, people didn’t live as long then,” meaning the writer wrote for the then population of Israel/Judea.

Anyway, that’s not the point here. The point here is about taking stock, looking back, to “get some idea of the shape of one’s life.”

Here’s the deal: It happened, whatever and however it was. You can’t change it; you can’t go back and re-live the good parts or the whole thing. It was.

(I thought about writing: “Fuck it. What my life has been, it has been.” Then I decided that might be … I decided not to write that.

(On reflection, though, my first inclination was right.)