Ton van Schoonhoven was born during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, the oldest of seven children. His family moved often in his early years. Of the occupation he remembers little, only the sound of Dakota airplanes that fly each May 5th for Liberation Day.
The water found him at seven, near a lake where he learned to swim. Cleaning boats at a rental company earned him free rowing afterward, and he never looked back. At 15 he took up competitive rowing, at 20 sailing, later becoming a sailing instructor. He owned his own boat, sailing across the Netherlands, the North Sea, and as far as Denmark, and once took work as a ship's cook just to secure a spot on a voyage.
Ton studied civil engineering, then worked a series of posts with local and provincial councils centered on water recreation. He retired at 60.
“I loved my work but didn't need my work to live. I didn't need my work to be a person.”
Retirement was no retreat. His fascination with Tall Ships, Clippers, and Windjammers deepened into passion. Certain he'd been born in the wrong century, he designed his own square-rigged Tall Ship and hand-built a 1:30 scale model, piece by piece. He later published a handbook, printed over 8,000 times, tracing Dutch expressions back to the country's nautical history.
For fourteen years Ton has coached rowing at the Spaarne Rowing Club, working with rowers of all ages, including a weekly group of disabled adults. For the past decade he has lived on a docked houseboat on the river Spaarne.
He married in 1969; the marriage ended in divorce after twenty-three years, but the family it produced remains central to him. A son was born in 1971, followed by two daughters, and he is close to all three, and to his five grandchildren. Single for 34 years, he has valued the freedom for new adventures, though it hasn't brought him the love of his life.
“Regretfully so,” he says, then smiles: “Who knows what happens tomorrow?”
How old are you and how old do you feel?
I am eighty-three years old. And I feel eighteen. That is not a joke and it is not vanity; it is simply how it is. I don't spend time in front of the mirror. What would be the point? The mirror will tell me one story. The water tells me another, and I have always trusted the water more.
There is something that happens when you are doing the thing you love, sailing, coaching, being outside and in motion, where the number attached to your age just stops meaning anything. I am not performing youth. I am not pretending. I simply don't feel old, and I have decided not to argue with that. If my day to day being says eighteen and the calendar says eighty-three, I will side with my body.
I think some people wait for permission to feel well. They look for it in a doctor's report or in how they compare to others their age. I never looked for it there. I just got up in the morning and got on with things, and somewhere along the way I stopped noticing that I was getting older.
Maybe that is the secret. Maybe the secret is that there is no secret, just the choice, made quietly and repeatedly, not to make age the most interesting thing about yourself.
So basically: my age? I don't dwell on it.
What helps you maintain your physical, mental, and social well-being?
Honestly? I am not actively trying to maintain anything. It just happens. I don't follow a program or track my habits or set wellness goals. I live, and living seems to be enough.
What I can tell you is that I am fortunate. My condition is good, my organs are doing what they are supposed to do, and I take no pills. I am aware that this is not something I earned entirely through discipline; some of it is simply luck, and I don't take it for granted.
But I also think that moving through life without constantly monitoring yourself helps. I am not watching my body for signs of failure. I am just using it.
My knees give me some trouble, so I row and I bike, and that keeps me in shape without asking too much of them. It is not a regimen so much as a practical arrangement between me and my body. We have an understanding.
What I notice is that none of this feels like maintenance. It feels like living. The rowing, the sailing, the coaching, the grandchildren on most weeks: these are not things I do to stay well. They are simply my life, and wellness, it turns out, tends to follow from that.
What advice do you have for aging well?
Stop worrying about aging. That is the whole of it, really, though I understand people want more.
Don't spend your days cataloguing what hurts. Don't sit across from people at dinner and list your ailments. Everyone has something that aches, something that works less smoothly than it once did, but the moment you make that the center of your conversation, you have handed your life over to it. I refuse to do that. My knees hurt sometimes. I note it, I adjust, I move on.
I don't think about aging. I just live, in the moment I am actually in, not the one I am anxious about. There is an enormous amount of energy wasted in anticipating decline, in rehearsing problems that may never arrive. That energy could be spent on the water, or with your grandchildren, or doing something that reminds you who you were at eighteen.
Stay positive. I know that sounds simple, almost too simple, but I mean it practically rather than as a slogan. Positivity is not the denial of difficulty; it is the choice of where to put your attention. I put mine on what is working, on what I still get to do, on what is in front of me rather than what is behind.
That choice, made every day, is the only aging strategy I have ever needed.
Life expectancy 2023
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