Ya know, this business of getting old is utterly fascinating to me.
Yes, various body parts don’t work real well anymore. Yes, driving to Graeagle for lunch (from Grass Valley) and back in the same day is now too strenuous to be fun. Yes, people I care about are dying at a daunting clip. And I wonder at times, which will run out first, my money or my days.
AND – boy, are there some surprising things to learn.
For instance: I graduated high school in the mid-1960’s, part of the California 60’s when the civil rights movement was breaking news. When Janis Joplin was still touring. When every young man I cared about (friend, boyfriend, brother…) was at risk of being shipped to Vietnam. Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement was in full swing; hippies were flooding San Francisco. “American Graffiti” was live and in person every day.
Footnote: The Sixties were widely known for “Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll.” I have regularly whined that I was short-changed… all I got was rock n roll!
Seriously, my friends and I were sometimes angry about the mess “old people” over 30 had made of things, and we were also filled with unquenchable optimism that we could put it right.
Truly, I thought I knew all about that decade because I lived it.
Well, in the last coupla years I’ve learned a bit about history, specifically assessing the 60’s with the benefit of fifty years of perspective. It turns out to have been different in many interesting ways from what I assumed. Then, I had no idea that things wouldn’t get better and better and better. Today many of us are afraid things are out of control and going to get worse and worse and worse.
Do I yearn to return to that “Eden?”
In a word: Nope!
There certainly are things I am nostalgic about, but the gift of seeing with a wider perspective makes my life (then and now) newly fascinating.
Who knew how to find adventure and joy without reliable knees? Who imagined that years dedicated to driven perfectionism would be a dead end, a worthy experiment, not a path to eventual ease and safety? Who knew how the texture of forty-year-old friendships would feel? Who guessed I would come to enjoy living “in town,” in a traditional neighborhood? Indeed, who knew to insist that the new-to-us house should be on a cul de sac, a place where the street plan encourages neighboring?
Who knew… well, that list keeps getting longer. While it is certainly true that some of these lessons were pretty dern painful, still, I am delighted that I’m not likely to end up bored spitless, stuck on the sofa, wondering if Jeopardy will come on again and brighten my day. Rather, I’m optimistic that curiosity and a sense of humor (neither of which depend on finances or health) will get me through.
Actually, I think this is gonna be fun!