Dick Van Dyke is 99. The guy who danced on rooftops in Mary Poppins and flew around in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is somehow still more energetic than most of us rolling out of bed on a Monday. He’s about to hit the big 100 on 13 December and decided now is a great time to give advice on how to make it to a good old age.
He swears there are two things he’s dodged his whole life: Hate and anger.
“I’ve always thought that anger is one thing that eats up a person’s insides – and hate,” he told People magazine. It’s a really simple idea, but very hard in practice.
Van Dyke admits there were always people he didn’t exactly want to grab coffee with. “There were things I didn’t like, people I don’t like and disapprove of. But I never really was able to do a white heat kind of hate.”
Keeping a “brighter outlook” sounds like generic advice your aunt would put on a fridge magnet. Except, when it comes from a living Disney legend with seven decades in showbiz and a trophy cabinet stacked with four Emmys, a Tony for Bye Bye Birdie, and a Grammy from the Mary Poppins soundtrack, you should probably listen carefully.
Van Dyke also credits his 54-year-old wife, Arlene, for keeping him upright and laughing.
“Without question, our ongoing romance is the most important reason I have not withered away into a hermetic grouch,” he wrote in a health diary for The Times.
The age gap doesn’t bother him. In fact, he thinks it keeps him young. “Arlene is half my age, and she makes me feel somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters my age, which is still saying a lot.”
He doesn’t pretend everything’s sunshine and roses, though. He admits that turning 100 comes with emotional battle scars. “Every single one of my dearest lifelong friends is gone, which feels just as lonely as it sounds.”
Still, Van Dyke stays active and refuses to be confined to a rocking chair. Last year he appeared in a Coldplay music video. This year he launched a book called 100 Rules For Living To 100.
“Each rule springs from a story in my own life, which I believe has stuck itself in my memory for a good reason – because it had some broader emotional significance for me.”
Rule number one: don’t wake up grumpy. “I feel really good for 100. Sometimes I have more energy than others – but I never wake up in a bad mood. I feel like I’m about 13.”
He doesn’t stress about how people will remember his name when he’s gone. He cares about the joy he leaves behind. “But it’s the music, the music we leave behind. For as long as children are proudly belting out their new word, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, or singing and skipping along to Chim Chim Cher-ee, the most important part of me will always be alive.”
He calls it “a wonderfully full and exciting life, that I can’t complain.”
And if avoiding pointless rage and loving someone who makes you feel not a day over 75 is the secret, maybe Dick Van Dyke is onto something.
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