It’s hard to believe that so many years of my life have gone by and I’m at the ripe old age of seventy-two.  When I was sixty-five, I remember thinking what a long life that was.  Of course, when I turned seventy, that feeling was even more pronounced.  What do I have to say at seventy-two?

My life has been a mixed bag.  Although I’m very grateful to have reached this age, I have to say that it hasn’t always been a bed of roses.  I didn’t arrive here with the questions or the answers to the challenges of life.  My parents and other caregivers along the way didn’t have the answers either.  They were all making the journey that I’ve been making these past 72 years.  It’s a learning from life and about life as we go along – a kind of growing-up that we do day after day, year after year.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ~ Rumi

Parents want their children to be clever and “bright.”  As in most societies and cultures throughout the world where a high emphasis is placed on book learning, they tried their best to “educate” me.   A lot of learning back then was by rote.  I don’t even think my educators themselves knew any other way to teach or that there was any other way for a child to learn.  I myself didn’t know back then that there was such a thing as “critical thinking.”

“Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used.” – Carl Sagan

With due respect to all our elders and educators – secular, religious, political, and otherwise, there’s much, much more to life than rote learning, book learning, or following any particular system blindly.  Of course, this doesn’t only apply to the basic learning that is necessary for all of us as we get “schooled.”  It applies to learning to live out our lives in a manner that fits with who we are in order to bring the best of who we are into all the different roles/areas of life we find ourselves in.

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one learned in school.” – Albert Einstein

As I’ve grown older, day by day and year by year, it has occurred to me that there are those inner recesses of the mind that we don’t really access until we’re of mature age.  It may not be so for everyone but it’s certainly been so for me.  The maturity I speak of isn’t physical but has led to more of an ability to see and discern things in a broader and more “enlightened” way.

The preoccupations of younger days no longer have the same appeal now.  Who cares about school now?  What about money and property?  That striving and wanting that I had for so many things has gone.  My biological clock has been winding down for over a decade now.  None of this is morbid in the least bit.  It’s a reality that’s true for me.  It causes me to grow in other ways.

“If we shift as we age toward appreciating everyday pleasures and relationships rather than toward achieving, having, and getting, and if we find this more fulfilling, then why do we take so long to do it? Why do we wait until we’re old? The common view was that these lessons are hard to learn. Living is a kind of skill. The calm and wisdom of old age are achieved over time.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal:  Medicine and What Matters in the End.

 

Yes – there’s a time for everything.  The later years are not a disease or sickness but a different phase of life.  It’s true that many older persons have diseases and illnesses.  Those are a result of biological processes.  I myself have those.  Things wear out with use and the body is no different.

However, barring dementia, Alzheimer’s, and being bedridden, the spirit of a person continues to be however it was.  If a person had a playful spirit, they continue to be that way.  Learning, growing, creating, playing (cards, music, dominoes, etc.)  bring joy even in one’s later years.  I’m happy to be learning and exploring many new things at 72.  Despite the aches and pains that come with aging, I try to live each day with enthusiasm and gratitude.

Although I can’t do it, there are many days that I feel like I want to dance, sing, jump and play.  With my “new eyes,” I see every older person as a young person inside.  If I feel this way, I know that other elderly people must feel this way too.