Setting goals, also when you are old. In memory of Robert Marchand.

Recently I heard a cabaret performer say when asked what he thought of old age (he is already in his eighties): It’s fine but what I miss most is that I cannot make plans anymore. Saying this, without a doubt (he didn’t explicitly say so) he meant that in the near future you’ll die when you are old and you don’t know when. You have no longer-term perspective anymore, for there is a good chance that you cannot finish what you have started. The future has become short.
It’s true what the cabaret performer said but in a sense it isn’t. A few years ago I wrote a blog about setting targets when you are old (see here). It was a blog about the cyclist Robert Marchand. Marchand, then 105 years old, had set a world record in one-hour track cycling in the over-105 age group, a category especially created for him. Of course, before he did everybody of that age could set such a record, for you just had to ride for one hour on your bike and you had it. Not so Marchand. He didn’t want to set simply a record, but he wanted to ride the best record he could, if possible one that was faster than the time he rode when he set the world record in one-hour track cycling in the over-100 age group. As was to be expected, Marchand didn’t break his 100+ record, but he cycled an unbelievable distance in that hour on the National Velodrome at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines near Paris: 22,547 km. Who will ever go faster? But Marchand was a bit disappointed that he didn’t.
Marchand’s record was not only a remarkable time set by a remarkable man, but it refuted also the assertion by the cabaret performer I started this blog with: That there is no future, no perspective, no planning possible when you are old. Every sportsman knows that if you want to achieve a goal and you take it as seriously as Robert Marchand did, you must determine exactly what you want to achieve and you must make a plan. You must plan how to train in order to be able to get a top performance and you must determine a date when to perform. In other words, you must create a perspective for yourself, and that’s what Robert Marchand did.
Now I am the first to say that not everybody is still given to set goals when old. Health differences become enormous above, say, the age of 70. I don’t need to mention here all the diseases, illnesses and infirmities of old age. Many of them simply make setting goals and having a perspective for the future impossible or not sensible. There is no way than making the best of it and undergo the sufferance. On the other hand, many old people are still in good health. Then, as the case of Marchand shows, you can still set goals. Obviously, you are no longer as fit as when you were young. Especially you decline physically. Many people say: Mentally I still feel as if I am thirty but my body works against me. If you would ask me, I would say the same, but actually I doubt whether in my mind I am still that young, but anyway it feels so…
As for the physical decline, there is more to do about it than many people think. Particularly when you are old inactivity will be the end. “Use it or lose it” is an adage that was already known in antiquity. So even at old age, physical exercise is important, or maybe even more important, something that also Marchand knew. So, when not so long ago he stopped outdoor cycling for medical reasons, he continued training on his indoor bike trainer and doing exercises. What many old people don’t know is that by physical training you cannot only slow down the physical decay, but you can even become better! Of course, not when you are already top fit, but certainly when you are on a lower level of your capabilities, there is room for improvement. Moreover, do not look only at the physical side of yourself. Using and exercising your mental capacities, your brain, is as important as staying physically in shape. Use your brain and be open for what is new. A healthy mind in a healthy body. However, the other way round is as much important: A body cannot stay healthy without a healthy mind. Human existence is a whole. Mind and body interact and at the same time they are one. Nonetheless, and in that sense it’s true what the cabaret performer said, gradually your perspective shrinks; naturally. Your goals come – no necessarily must come – nearer in time; naturally. Nobody can surpass human existence. On the 22th of May, 2021, Robert Marchand died, 109 years old. 

Recommended literature
Martha C. Nussbaum; Saul Levmore, Aging Thoughtfully. Conversations about Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, and Regret. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.