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Thursday, August 20, 2020

Dick Van Dyke: Man Without a Plan

Dick Van Dyke in 2010, rehearsing for a one-man show.

“Here is the truth: your teens and twenties are your plan A. At fifty, you’re assessing whether plan B or plan C or any of the other plans you hatched actually worked. Your sixties and seventies are an improvisation. There is no blueprint, and quite honestly you spend a lot of time feeling grateful you’re still here. Call it fate, luck or whatever. If you make it past then, as I have, you discover a truth and joy that you wish you had known earlier: there is no plan.

“As you get older, you figure this out. You relax. You exhale. You quit worrying. You shake your head with an accepting disbelief as family members and friends disappear like photos in a yearbook, leaving empty spaces where there used to be familiar faces, and occasionally you wonder when it will be your turn and what that will be like. You go for a walk — not to get from point A to point B but just because you want to feel the warm sun on your skin and enjoy fresh air.”

— Dick Van Dyke in his book Keep Moving and Other Tips About Aging. At 65, he started a new TV series, Diagnosis: Murder, which he continued for 10 years.

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