I used to think of sixty as old.
Yet here I am at eighty-four, wondering where that idea came from.
Those of us in our later years are actually the fastest growing segment of the population. We’re not alone in aging — that process started the day everyone was born. We’re just further along the road. And that’s not entirely bad. We’ve accumulated something the younger crowd is still working toward: wisdom, perspective, and the particular freedom that comes from having lived through enough to know what actually matters.
Depending on when you grew up, life looked very different from today. Telephone party lines. Milk delivered in glass bottles. Playing hopscotch and dodgeball and jump rope outside until it got dark and someone’s mother called you in for supper.
We could understand the lyrics on our 78 rpm records. The speed limit was sixty. We pretended to be Roy Rogers or Dale Evans or whatever cowboy was featured at the drive-in movie on Saturday night. Later came Howdy Doody, the Mickey Mouse Club, and the Beverly Hillbillies on black and white television screens that families gathered around like a campfire.
Some of us lived through ration stamps and fathers away at war. We witnessed the Korean War and the riots against Vietnam. We watched a President resign. We saw the 1900s turn into the 2000s and wondered what came next.
And now here we are, turning the pages of life’s calendar once again.
Who are we now?
We are no longer those children — but we are the same people who have done our best through whatever life handed us. We are the girls with grandmother faces and the boys with grandfather faces, carrying inside us every version of ourselves we have ever been. Those experiences shaped us. They brought knowledge and wisdom, sadness and joy, and yes — regrets too. We have learned more about living than we often stop to recognize.
As we grow older life will inevitably bring more challenges — loss, health issues, circumstances we never planned for. But this is not the time to stop living a productive and meaningful life. We are never too old to gain new knowledge, embrace new experiences, or create fresh memories. That door does not close until we close it ourselves.
It all comes down to attitude.
With imagination and openness we can discover new ways to make life fulfilling. If we resist change and refuse to expand our horizons, loneliness and boredom can take hold. But we have more power over that than we sometimes believe.
The past two years have been the most difficult of my life. After 63 years of marriage I made the transition to widowhood and to living alone — and that transition changes life in ways that cannot be undone. It’s almost like starting over. I’m not saying life is better without my husband. It is simply different. Quieter. Sometimes achingly so.
But I am still here. Still curious. Still surprised by what each new day brings.
So surprise yourself. As the Serenity Prayer wisely says — accept the things you cannot change, work on the things you can, and use the wisdom you have spent a lifetime earning to know the difference.
We didn’t come this far to stop now.