To retire, or not to retire: Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez addresses the challenges of aging and MEGO

ORIGINAL EASY READER STORY BY KEVIN CODY

Four years ago, when Steve Lopez was approaching his fifth decade as a newspaper reporter and columnist, he confronted a question that continues to confound him. Quit, or keep working? To answer the question, he spent that year, 2021, writing “Independence Day: What I learned about retirement from some who’ve done it, and some who never will.” 

“I’m still here,” Lopez said in answer to the question during his talk at the annual Peninsula Verdes Peninsula Village luncheon at the Palos Verdes Country Club on September 30. 

“For now,” he added.

Lopez’s ambivalence about retirement is both professional and personal, he disclosed during the luncheon, where he was joined at the podium by fellow columnist, and Village co-founder Helen Dennis. Her column, “Successful Aging,” appears in the Southern California News Group newspapers, including the Daily Breeze.

After “Independence Day’s” publication in 2022, Lopez moved the Los Angeles Times column he has written since 2001, from the general assignment beat to the aging population beat. 

“I’m turning 70 this year, and as of today, my column will focus on aging,” he wrote in his  January 12, 2023 column. His “Points West” column was renamed “Golden State.”  

The decision was both noble and selfless, notwithstanding Lopez’s age.

“Population aging is the second most important phenomenon humanity will have to … address in the 21st century,” Paul Irving, founding chair of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, has written. (Climate change is the most important, Irving argued.)

But like climate change, population aging is what newspaper editors call a MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) story.

New York Times “On Language” columnist William Safire wrote of MEGO, “It is the unanswerable criticism…It is an article written about a subject of great importance which resists reader interest…even when given some zing, [it] soon lies there without a quiver of life.”

But if anyone can put zing into stories about population aging, it’s Lopez.

Peers have honored him with the H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Ernie Pyle awards, all named for great newspaper columnists. The Wall Street Journal named “Independence Day” one of 2022’s “best books on aging and retirement.”

His 2008 book, “The Soloist,” about a violin virtuoso Lopez discovered on Skid Row, won the PEN USA award for literary non-fiction. It was turned into a movie in 2009, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez.

Lopez alluded to the MEGO challenge when he told his Peninsula audience, “I try not to use the term ‘senior citizen,’ though I get tired of writing ‘older adults.’ In his first Golden State column he wrote, “I’ve not used the words ‘senior,’ or ‘elderly,’ …the preferred language [is] ‘older,’ or ‘aging.’”

Holding young readers in stories about population aging is even more challenging because of the stigma attached to older adults. 

“The stigma is, ‘Shove them aside. They’ve ruined the world we live in. …Get them the hell out of the way,’” Lopez said.

Lopez said he began thinking about retirement 13 years ago when he underwent a knee replacement and went into cardiac arrest. 

“I thought, ‘Is that a sign?’” 

“We don’t know how long we have. What about all those things I’ve wanted to try.…Am I going to be one of those people who retires on Friday and drops dead on Monday?” he recalled thinking.

He began writing about the aging population two years later, in 2014, when both of his parents entered hospice care.  

“My father fell trying to walk to the bathroom at night and couldn’t get up. He refused another trip to the hospital, so my mother got down next to him, pulled up a blanket, and they went to sleep together on the floor until help arrived in the morning. 

“I was struck by the cruel irony that at the time in life when you’re least able to fight, you have to be at your strongest,” he wrote in a column about caring for his parents.

The experience brought home to him what experts say are the three biggest challenges facing the aging population.

About 10,000 people turn 65 each day in the United States. By 2035, people 65 and older will outnumber those under 18. In California, a quarter of the population will be 60 or older by 2030.

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