Bob Dylan on how to age gracefully
If there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about getting older, it’s Bob Dylan. The legendary singer-songwriter is now an octogenarian, but that hasn’t stopped him or his Never Ending Tour from going at a constant speed. Dylan has more energy than most people half his age, but as he shared with AARP back in 2015, age isn’t really the thing that holds him back.
“Look, you get older,” Dylan explains. “Passion is a young man’s game. Young people can be passionate. Older people gotta be more wise. I mean, you’re around awhile, you leave certain things to the young. Don’t try to act like you’re young. You could really hurt yourself.”
“A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life, and certainly, there’s no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness,” Dylan adds. “Just because you’re satisfied one moment—saying yes, it’s a good meal, makes me happy—well, that’s not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner, you know? Really, time is your soul mate. I’m not exactly sure what happiness even means, to tell you the truth.”
Even though Dylan can’t quite put his finger on happiness, he does have an opinion on what makes people unhappy, harkening back to the Christian faith that he found in the 1980s. “People’s lives today are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice,” he claims. “Sooner or later, you have to see through it, or you don’t survive. We don’t see the people that vice destroys.”
So where has Dylan seen people of all generations having fun together? That’s easy: at an Elton John concert. “I went to an Elton John show; there must have been at least three generations of people there,” Dylan said. “But they were all the same. Even the little kids. They looked just like their grandparents. It was strange. People make a fuss about how many generations follow a certain type of performer. But what does it matter if all the generations are the same?”
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