My mother used to say that getting old is not for the faint of heart. Being young and invincible, I thought mom complained too much. Now that I’m older and wiser, I realize that she was right.
Think about it.
We have a long period of on-the-job training to get old. You’d think with all that experience behind us, we’d be better at it. However, one of the problems is that someone keeps changing the working conditions.
Twenty years ago, I took an adult education course in computer programming at the local high school. As I told my husband, “It’s getting so big that if you don’t know how to use computers, you’re functionally illiterate.”
Today, with my computer skills, I am being besieged by PDAs, iPods, smartphones, Facebook and Tweeters. Someone has changed the working conditions.
Some of us may still remember the happy days of the family doctor, the general practitioner, who, if he (and for the most part they were him) didn’t make house calls, at least didn’t charge you through the nose for a phone call. of office.
Someone has changed working conditions: how many of us have trouble getting in to see a doctor in the first place? And it is that the cost of a call to the office is so high that we only go if it is absolutely necessary. Health insurance, which was supposed to make health care more available and more affordable, has gotten out of control. Many of us can’t even afford health insurance.
No, aging is not for the faint of heart. But the alternative is not so good either. Harvard professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot in her book The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50 I says:
“We must develop a compelling vision of old age: one that does not assume a trajectory of decline after fifty, but recognizes it as a time of change, growth and new learning, a time when our courage gives us hope.”
As I think about all of this, it seems to me that this is the challenge that many of us Baby Boomers face: We’ve worked hard all our lives, and it’s so tempting to rest on our laurels and set our course.
The image of the heavy old curmudgeon or the rough old woman comes to mind. I suspect that’s what a lot of young people think of us: we’re so far down the hill that…
Perhaps we are so far from the hill that we have started to climb the other side! It is we who are changing our own working conditions. We are not satisfied with our ways and we are not satisfied with the same as always. We look forward to another twenty or thirty good years of life, and we are determined to make them count for something.
It has been said that the past is over, the future will never come, and all we really have is today. That was never truer in my life than it is now and I suspect the same is true for you. Let’s make this moment the best years of our lives.
