Sixty-year-old, one owner, needs parts ... Make offer. Unknown
I TURNED 60 TODAY. I take comfort knowing it's the only time I'll have to do this and it will be over in 24 hours.
So far, I greet the day with mixed emotions.
For me, 60 always has been a line in the sand of sorts. Right or wrong, I have always considered it to be the beginning of old age.
So, pardon the sigh. And I can explain the smile.
I sigh for the obvious reasons. And I smile because I feel good about what I have done and what I still intend to do. Mistakes have been made, but life has been lived. And if turning 60 serves a purpose, it may be to remind me that life is a participatory sport.
Did you know that in the Hindu culture, turning 60 years old is a particularly important event - it is considered to be the completion of a full lifecycle. Starting today, every day is considered to be a gift, a bonus to an already full life. I like that ...
So, I try to put a positive spin on things, I resort to the fine art of rationalization. I latch on to a common one, but it just doesn't work for me:
- 60 is the new 40. It would be nice, but no, 60 remains 60, 40 remains 20 years less than 60. We don't get to change mathematics for our own convenience.
But here are a couple bits of rationalization that I can run with:
- 60 is the youth of old age. When it comes to old folks, I'm just a youngster. No one who is old is younger than me.
- Like father, like son. If I live to the age of my father, a full third of my life waits to be lived. Another 10,000 days coming at me, one after the other.
And that leaves me asking myself, what, I wonder, should I do with all of those days still remaining? This I know for sure:
- Whatever I do, it will be done slower. I'm tired of rushing. We live in a time where people rush through their days, we travel from one stop to the next at 60 miles an hour and we share information in nanoseconds. The problem is that speed is the enemy of doing most things well. Creativity, thought, inspiration, relationships, all suffer when hurried. I'm slowing down.
- And whatever I do, I will do it smarter. I do not believe wisdom necessarily comes with age, but I do think it comes with experience. I have to admit, I've made some real blunders along the way. I'm sure others are still out there waiting. But there will be fewer of them. We do learn from our mistakes. Perhaps even more importantly, we also learn from our correct decisions.
After 60 years, this I know for sure: I have habits that run deep. Much of what I do is a matter of habit - and that goes for you to. More than we realize, our reactions are defined by conditioned ways of thinking. In large part, we think a certain way because that is how we have always thought. We do certain things because that is what we have always done.
Fine. So, 10,000 days still to go. It is time to be smarter, to think differently, to get out of the box. And that sort of thinking is another reason I smile. Because that is just the type of thinking that got me right here, right now.
So, happy birthday to me ... and I'll leave you with another quote:
It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place. Abigail Van Buren
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