I just had a birthday, turning 75. I don’t have a real job anymore, but I still have plenty of things to do: biking, swimming, volunteering and substitute teaching at local high schools. What a rush trying to hold the attention of 25 or so 14- to 17-year-olds for an hour!
Now, when I meet new people, they don’t ask what I do — which used to be the standard introductory question. Instead, they ask: “Who did you use to be?”
I liked working full-time and would not have retired when I did except that my church asked me to serve as a mission leader in Ghana, West Africa. I did it willingly. It was fulfilling.
When it was over, I returned home to Texas and tried to get a job again. Any job. They don’t even have greeters saying “Welcome to Walmart” anymore, so that was out.
My old company wasn’t hiring, nor were other companies where I applied. In a burst of honesty, one person with whom I interviewed even told me to go home and enjoy my “golden years.” I had earned it, he said. Let younger people carry the torch now.
Ageism can sometimes be even more difficult than aging.
I’m not one to “go gentle into that good night” nor to “rage against the dying of the light,” as the poet Dylan Thomas wrote. Instead, I tend to adopt the approach often attributed to Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture: “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
I don’t know if it works for anyone else, but here’s how I plan to play my hand in the coming years.
Keep the fire lit
My neighbor Laurie Terry is about my same age and is always on the go. We moved to St. George about the same time as she and her husband. None of us had played pickleball before we became neighbors. We all learned together. Then, Laurie began studying ways to improve on YouTube. She took classes. She joined a group who played three times a week.
We don’t play with her anymore. She is too good.
Active in other ways, Laurie rode her e-bike on an unfamiliar desert trail not long ago and unfortunately misjudged a turn. She flipped over her handlebars when she hit a rut in the trail. While recuperating from her injuries, she looked for something else to do. She became interested in mahjong. She began playing online, then with others around town. Soon, she was teaching anyone in the neighborhood who was interested how to play. She’s just that good.
Practice focused inattention
Distractions abound. Deciding what not to pay attention to can sometimes be more useful than choosing what to listen to.
Nearly every message that comes my way suggests that growing older promises diminishing returns: fewer relationships, less excitement, no visibility. When we moved to St. George, some neighbors said: “Welcome to God’s Waiting Room.”
We were flummoxed. Is that it? Is this the end of the line? Nothing more than waiting our turn to push up daisies?
We turned off the messaging. We substituted instead our own revised and updated version. We said we were going to make St. George “God’s Rumpus Room” instead. We went to high school basketball games and cheered for our neighbors’ kids, Kimball and Grant and Hayden, among others.
We had a block party and invited 35 nearby households to a backyard barbecue (but with plenty of vegetarian options for our Hindu friends). We started a book club. We refused to act our age — or, at least, what some others (including children) thought was age-appropriate for us.
Buy green bananas
George Burns, Erma Bombeck and Lou Holtz are each credited with variations of the phrase: “At my age, I don’t buy green bananas anymore.”
But regardless of who may have said it (or repeated it), they are all wrong. Optimism about the future is the fountain of youth. Consistently, research shows that how we view the future is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whether you think things are getting better or believe they are getting worse, you are right.
Optimism about the future is the fountain of youth.
A growing body of research suggests that optimism about aging plays a significant role in promoting both physical and emotional health. The old phrase “You are only as old as you think you are” is more right than wrong.
Go ahead and buy the green bananas. Plan the family reunion next year. Prepay for long-term phone plans to get the discount. Have enough food storage for one year. You’ll live longer and enjoy life more.
Age is just a number and mine is unlisted, as my wife Stephanie likes to say. President Donald Trump turned 80 on June 14 and suggested that age neither defines him nor controls his actions. He told reporters, “I feel the same as I did 50 years ago. It is crazy.”
Life inevitably brings changes. Adjusting and adapting to them at any age requires living intentionally. There are no “do overs.” Instead of grieving the past, we can embrace the present. We can worry less about what we don’t have and see with clarity what we do have. Perhaps more than anything else, aging brings clarity. We see ourselves and everything else more clearly. And all that is worth the ride.