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Sunday musings 1/6/19 An Older Me

Sunday musings…

Do you play the New Year’s Resolution Game? I do. Sorta. Kinda. I have a January birthday so it’s pretty convenient to work on being a bit better, or at least trying to be a little less aged (while rejoicing that I am still getting older) around this time of year. At the moment I am climbing out of the rat hole that is MyFitnessPal and trying to fit my numbers in so that I can track my actual nutrition consumption in my quest. To be honest I’m not sure if that was so much the beginning of a deep dive or a close encounter with drowning (in information).

Anyway…

Tomorrow I turn 59. Yup, that’s right…once again I stand on the cups of a “number” birthday. You probably don’t recall my angsty year as I was turning 50 (See: The Hard Turn at Mile Marker 49), but trust me, Beth sure does. “Are we gonna have another shitty year listening to you whine like when you were 49?” Or something to that effect LOL. For whatever it’s worth I really don’t see that coming this year. While I admit to a bit of frustration and a touch of sadness as my body takes on its new, decidedly more fragile mid-life form (bonus: soft = cuddly!), it all just seems to be OK. Just where I am at the moment.

Our lives are getting longer. At least for those of us who are not unlucky, that is. One need not be nearly as consumed with the fitness thing as I’ve been these last 10+ years to remain reasonably healthy and able. Really, all you have to be for the stage I’m entering is fit enough to walk after a tyke learning to ride a bike. Once your cubs have progressed past that stage you’re not keeping up, even if you fancy yourself a Masters athlete of some kind or another.

It’s easy to think of longer lives as being all about the years added on to the end and what they constitute. Natural enough, especially if you, like Beth and me, have aging or recently deceased parents and the endgame is forefront in your mind. In truth it’s probably more reasonable, and accurate, to think rather of those extra years being added to the middle of our lives, extending what may be the best part of the modern human existence (credit: Marc Freedman). Sure, we will all likely end up a shell of our former selves in most ways at the very end, just like our parents and grandparents, and probably for just as long. It’s that we are likely to enter that particular phase at a much older age, hence the “enhanced middle” years.

Turning 40 was pretty much a non-event for me for a couple of reasons. First, my darling Beth got terribly sick right around the time of my birthday. I mean ICU level care, are you gonna make it sick. That kind of thing really grabs your attention, especially if it is happening to the single most important person/thing in your entire life. That birthday pretty much never happened. But even before then a chance encounter on a chairlift in Utah had already smoothed out all of the speed bumps on the journey. A former NHL hockey player who’d found another success as a businessman shared his philosophy about being in his 40’s. He described this stage of life as the optimal intersection of experience and physicality. In your 40’s you are likely still rather fit and able, and you are therefore able to put into play all of the knowledge gained in the “learning decades”.

I liked that very much indeed, and it turned out to be pretty accurate as well.

So what about now, sitting on the cusp of 60? Good, bad, or indifferent it’s been quite a while since I’ve been on a chairlift, but if I were to close my eyes and imagine myself once again sitting next to this sage what might he offer about what comes next? Not gonna lie, I’ve given this quite a bit of thought. If your 40’s and maybe your 50’s are the stage where experience meets your physical self then I think your 60’s (and hopefully 70’s) are that part of life where you are blessed with wisdom and time. Wisdom in its simplest form is the result of experience and reflection. Freed (again, hopefully) from the pressures that earlier life stages present one has time now to employ that wisdom in any number of ways.

Most of us have spent at least a little bit of time looking for some sort of meaning, or meaningfulness in the daily living of our lives. With any luck as you approach 60 this is somewhat clearer for you. I know it is for me. Those first four decades were about gathering and growing, and the last two for consolidation and contemplation on what I’d accumulated. Knowing, or coming to know what seems to be important among that “collection” should allow me to shed that which lacks meaningfulness. For example, things like grudges and the fantasy that they might somehow be avenged certainly find their way quite easily to life’s trash heap at this stage.

Where am I now as I sit on the cusp of wisdom and contemplate how I will spend the (hoped for) riches of time? Older, no doubt, but perhaps only that.

I’ll see you next week…

 

2 Responses to “Sunday musings 1/6/19 An Older Me”

  1. January 6th, 2019 at 7:39 pm

    Graham Leck says:

    Happy Birthday tomorrow Bingo. All the best for your next 10 years. I am sure they will be unbeatable.
    Enjoy every moment.

  2. January 7th, 2019 at 2:12 pm

    drwhite says:

    Thanks Graham! Seems weird not to be on the Main Page comments in January. Cheers.

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