This is an opinion column.

It’s the ‘9s that will get you. Always the ‘9s.

I remember my 29th birthday, but not my 30th. It was the one they said to hold onto, but the first to remind me it’s slipping away.

But dang, that was half a lifetime ago. I’ll turn 60 next month. Not old, in my head. But still the age my grandmother died, and in pictures she seemed so … matriarchal. I’m the oldest guy in a lot of rooms, on a lot of basketball floors, in a lot of places. When I decline help getting my groceries to the car, I’m old enough to hear the kindly baggers persist, as if I’m being silly.

“Are you sure,” they say.

I’m sure.

I never really thought about getting old before. I presumed – with the youngest child voice still narrating my life – that old would come last for me, that I would be forever youthful in my head, even in my dotage.

But we can’t count on that. it’s coming. Whether I want it or not.

My token optimist friend, a New Yorker named Paul Blutter who thinks Alabama is the Garden of Eden, read a book that reminded him to seize the day, and he let me know.

“I loved the book but the math is pretty clear,” he wrote in a text. “We gotta live now.”

A married couple – two other good friends – just set out for Sicily.

We “had an impromptu, spontaneous and simultaneous fit of ‘we’re all slowly dying so let’s pick something we want to do and do it now,’” the husband said. So within days they crossed the seas.

I’d been thinking the same thing, for the first time in my life.

I asked Josh Klapow, a 55-year-old pup of a UAB clinical psychologist, what advice he had (not for me, of course) for people trying to hold on to peace of mind as they see time speeding up.

“Time is speeding up,” he said. “It is passing by.”

Which did not seem all that reassuring. But as in life, there was more.

“There is hope for all of us ‘old folks,’” he went on. “As we age we get to spend less and less time trying to figure out who we are going to be. We don’t have to worry as much about what our future holds. With age comes the ability to take in the moments as we are right now and not have to fret about how they will impact the trajectory of our lives. If you can embrace the fact that you have arrived, then you get to soak it all in for what it is, and not for what it might become.”

I feel that. Looking too far ahead is crippling. Looking at now? Well that takes time to learn. It takes discipline to do. It takes a kind of peace that only comes with realizing that what comes next is not as important as what comes now.

So I sat down to think of what is important to me. Today. It might change tomorrow, and that’s just fine. My list is different than it has ever been before, because it has very little to do with success or image or proving myself.

This is my list:

Stay in shape, mentally and physically. Travel, and come back home realizing – as my friend Paul always can – all there is to appreciate about this place.

Laugh. Laugh with family or friends. Laugh at yourself, because that’s what separates you from those who can’t.

Do good. But be OK with it when you can’t.

Fight the damn fight. But find hope. Even when it seems elusive, or fanciful, or delusional. It will let you sleep.

Spend time outside. Eat well. Try new things. Try old things in new ways.

Listen to new music. Listen to old music. Surround yourself with younger people, for they will keep you current. They might test your patience, but they certainly test your brain.

Speak your peace. Or your piece. I never know which it is, because I always mean both.

Tell stories about the people you love, and why you love them. Laugh some more.

Help people when you can. Trust your children. Pet your pets. And ignore those who would make you feel bad.

Be angry when it is useful. But don’t be mad all the time. It just makes you seem old.

John Archibald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for AL.com.