I am now a senior citizen.
Have been for quite a while.
Three giveaways: my hair is as white as snow; I really enjoy reading my AARP magazine; I eat dinner at four.
I feel fortunate to have lived 72 years and honestly, I’m quite surprised that I have. As a teenager I was a pot smoking, beer drinking, surf punk. I got married two weeks past my teens. I was still a kid and continued with my stupid ways despite having our first daughter a year later. And then a second some eighteen months after that.
We had no money. I wasn’t a bad husband/father.
But I was far from perfect.
Way far.
I was selfish. I cared more about changing into a wetsuit than changing a pair of diapers.
I’ve apologized to my wife many times for my lack of understanding and not helping more during a time in her life where she needed me the most. I live with that guilt and have been trying to make it up to her every day. I’m still blown away that she never left me.
I would have left me if I had been her.
So why the spilling of the guts? Despite all the aches and pains, medications, and doctor visits that dominate your life when you get older, you can also appreciate the wisdom of time.
And hopefully, you’ve grown up.
We’re all born into a world of innocence. We have no clue what our future holds. Whether we’ll live nine years or ninety. We could say our lives are preordained, but are they? Society wraps herself around us and influences who we are or what we become. But we can use our minds and common sense to shape our future.
Ah, The Memories
As we race through what we call our lives, for those fortunate enough to reach the age of invisibility (that’s where the younger folks don’t see you anymore), we hope we can go out with all our faculties.
However, some of the greatest minds and most wonderful grandmas and grandpas aren’t so lucky. After spending decades working, building toward the future, raising children, grandchildren, life can play a cruel joke and rob you of your memories.
Our memory is like the foundation of a high rise. It builds over time, gets stronger and taller. It becomes the structure that stores all of what we were and what we have become. To lose that is like the crumbling of a beautiful building, unable to gather the pieces and put it back together.
My time at the Friendship House, a residency for those with Alzheimer’s and dementia, has opened the windows into that building to see beyond the person before me who struggles to recall the joyous memories of their life.
Some might say when you reach the “golden years,” “You’ve lived a long, good life,” but I don’t think anyone who reaches the senior citizen bracket likes to hear that. Maybe I have been around for a bit but that doesn’t mean I’m in any hurry to move on. Many an old(er) person has contributed and continues to do so for others and for society for as long they’re breathing.
We made it this far surviving plenty of stupid decisions. It’s our turn to share some of the wisdom we achieved before we traipse off to somewhere over the rainbow.
It’s frustrating during these tumultuous times of political chaos to see how much wasted energy is put into nonsensical loathing.
I saved a National Geographic from 2013 because there were some photos of people I liked. I was writing a novel, and I found the photos of the melding of people from around the world intriguing; what different nationalities and skin colors would look like mixed with one another. It got me thinking about a world where in fact there were no longer any borders, countries, or independent nations, and the planet functioned in global unity.
I know, right?
That’s why it was to be a fiction novel. Yet it’s something that could be a reality, centuries from now, if we don’t blow ourselves up first.
Vacationing in Pyongyang
The other main story in that NatGeo was about a couple of journalists who had been allowed to visit North Korea. The images of empty streets and slave labor in dry dirt fields trying to grow food didn’t even seem real. Large images of Kim Jong Un and his father light up the sides of buildings, so you know where Kim’s priorities are.
The journalists also visited a Buddhist monastery. It took them a little bit to realize the monks weren’t real. They were actors trying to convince the journalists that religious freedom existed in NK. Everything they were shown was a farce.
Even thirteen years ago it was guesstimated 200,000 people were imprisoned for expressing “unhappiness with the regime.” I wonder how many are even still alive or how many more were added. Most everyone is a slave of the government, unless you’re part of the loyal elite. And even then, you’re pretty much still a slave of the government.
When you look at the life we have in America, it’s pretty darn good. For all you America haters, take a long vacation to North Korea and let me know how it is.
Looking For That Happy Place
As a nation, we need to find our happy place. For us older folks still blessed enough to have our memories and knowledge, it’s imperative we use that experience to help move things in a positive direction. Steer away from the negative road we’ve been traveling lately.
The Olympics were a window into what a united world could look like. Athletes from around the globe shared their joys of victory or sadness of defeats with all nations, embracing one another regardless of where they were from.
We must figure out a way to make that world work for the grownups.
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