Over morning coffee in our hotel room, Earl read our horoscopes, which were printed in the local newspaper, compliments of astrologist Bernice Bede Osoi. Earl is a Leo and I am a Gemini.

Earl’s forecast said: “Be prepared for partnership arrangements to be a bit more complicated than you thought, even if things look good on the surface. It’s possible that a negative shift could still take place.” And mine said: “If you see that it is virtually impossible to convert others over to your way of thinking for the sake of harmony go along with the will of the majority. Or go do your own thing.”

In Earl’s case, it’s always a good idea to be prepared for the complicatedness of partnership arrangements, whether they are of a personal or business nature, whether things look good on the surface or not. So what kind of specific advice is this? And while it’s possible that a negative shift could take place, words like ‘possible’ and ‘could’ make the outcome less likely than if Ms. Osoi had said. “A negative shift will take place.”

Geminis are known for their split personalities. I don’t mean in the medical or psychological sense, but rather in their personal traits. They are serious but funny too. They are intelligent but they can be unmotivated. My horoscope, boiled to its essence, doesn’t tell me anything about what will happen in my life today. Rather it’s representative of how Geminis react in general. They either go along or go their own way.

It’s probably clear I am not impressed with Ms. Osoi’s predictions, although we didn’t critique the other ten astrological signs. On the basis of two, however, they are full of references that can be taken more than one way, as if she hedges her astrological bets. But then, she probably would say I just have too much time on my hands.

Yesterday’s appointment with my doctor made both of us happy. My blood pressure is great, my cholesterol is great, my liver is great. While I was surprised at all this, having gone to the appointment with low expectations, my doctor was most complimentary on the changes I’ve made recently in my lifestyle and their accompanying results.

“You’re fit to live to good long time,” Dr. S. said, as if handing me carte blanche for the future. “You’ve done really well. Keep it up.”

“But I don’t want to live a good long time,” I countered.

“How old do you want to live to be?” he asked without ever revealing whether my attitude was strange or not. Most physicians see their role as extending life; and I wondered if meeting someone who doesn’t necessarily agree with that view could be jolting.

“Between seventy and seventy-five,” I answered, fully aware that life expectancies are climbing beyond that at a steady pace. In fact, as people live into their late eighties and early nineties, we’ve divided old age into categories: the young old, the old, and the elderly.

If I had my druthers, I’d die as a young old, assuming the boundaries for that category are between seventy and seventy-five. I’ve come late to the benefits of regular exercise; but I know that, even if I work out religiously from today forward, I will never feel as good as I do now. Regardless of age, one’s physical abilities decline even under the best of circumstances.

It isn’t just the physical aspect, however; the mental, the social, and the relevant are all important too. Mentally, my mind is still pretty sharp, but the things it learned in school are clearly outdated. Nobody does multiplication tables, for instance, when they are allowed to use calculators; I find this frustrating at the store when the cashier can’t compute the change from a dollar when the item costs fifty-six cents. So it’s not that I’m falling behind mentally in a brain power sort of way; rather it’s the mental schooling that I had is no longer particularly useful.

My social life has the potential of being the same way, although so far it’s holding on. But I have no siblings, so I have no strong framework for memories about my childhood or communal recollections of various family events. Couple this with the ever increasing effort it takes to stay relevant in today’s world when you come from a world that existed half a century ago, and it’s a real struggle to communicate with those younger. The burden falls on the older person too, as younger people are not particular interested in “When I was your age” observations.

This doesn’t mean I’m ready to sit in a rocker somewhere and twiddle my thumbs, what it does mean is that I’m ready to make the rest of my life be as productive and pleasurable as possible while understanding that I and the rest of my generation are moving, for the most part, from center stage to bit players. Seventy years or so seems like a great run to me.