Bill Kay says 4 x 80 is more than 320

Dylan Thomas put his finger on it, well before the current obsession with defying mortality took hold.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
That is the anthem for a generation of people heading towards what used to be called old age, and is in the literal sense of being the final phase of our lives, however defined, but before infirmity sets in - better termed terminal decrepitude.
These musings are prompted by a coincidence which has led me to have a good look at four prominent figures now over 80 years old. Two I have blogged about already - the composer Maurice Jarre and tenor sax player Big Jay McNeely. The third, stock market billionaire Charlie Munger, I have referred to briefly in my column in the London Sunday Times. And last night I was at an evening in honour of, and featuring a career justification by, the prolific award-winning author Ray Bradbury.
That Bradbury needed to justify himself is in itself revealing, although he did so in the guise of advice to the rest of us, especially the young, to do whatever you love doing and never mind whether it brings you money or not. It crossed my mind that, while this was excellent advice to encourage everyone to aim high, in the end someone has to do the menial jobs, cleaning and so on, and few cleaners see it as the fulfilment of a life's ambition.
Never mind: I suppose the moral is that we can't all be winners, hard pill though that is to swallow. What links this quartet is that their lives have been characterised by an intimate intertwining of energy, determination and success. I am not saying that energy and determination guarantee sucsess, although I believe they are the qualities to ensure that you make the most of yourself, whatever that may be.
What is striking is that these four all still have high energy levels, emotional and mental in particular, although McNeely could not have played sax for well over half an hour at the age of nearly 81 without being physically fit, bowed as he was. Jarre was I suppose the nearest to what we might generally consider retirement. He may still be composing but his last entry on the Imdb website is for 2001 and when I heard his Q&A before Doctor Zhivago at the Egyptian Theatre he seemed be looking back on his career with the tranquility of one for whom it is complete. He was serene.
McNeely is clearly working. Munger will never retire, because the stock market, economics and world affairs clearly are his life and much of the time he is simply thinking about it and discussing it with his partner Warren Buffett and others. It hardly counts as work, so he is obeying Bradbury's edict, but he is still making plenty of money. He exuded the serenity of being in control and having no financial worries, rather than of regarding his career as over.
Bradbury is the oldest and most infirm, 88 years old and in a wheelchair, a victim of diabetes. Yet he was still thirsty for recognition, taking a series of illuminated addresses from the representatives of Arnold Schwartzenegger and other minor Californian politicians - only the Mayor of South Pasadena paid homage in person. And when Bradbury spoke he did so with an energy that was startling. He looked back on his career, all right, but with the air of a man for whom it is still a work in progress. As he said, he still writes every day. He was perhaps the least self-aware, not on the surface at least realising what a driven person he still is. And I believe that that is keeping him alive. He arrived at South Pasadena High School's auditorium in a stretch limo - whether his own or sent by the event organisers I don't know, though judging by his plain clothing I would guess a limo would not be his personal style.
The survival and flourishing dynamism of these men reminded me of a fact thrown away in one of the recently dead Lynda Bird Johnson, 30-year widow of President Lyndon Johnson. I think it said that she swam every day, until a few years ago. Whatever stopped her, and whether she realised it or not, that was the day Lady Bird began to die. Once activity becomes boring or somehow not worth the effort, that is when we start to give up. We can't do everything all the time, of course, and we certainly can't keep up strenuous physical activity. But you have got to keep plugging away or, as the great British journalist Rod Gilchrist put it, you've gotta keep on trucking.