If you’re reading this post, you’re probably 60-plus.
I crested 60 nearly seven years ago, which means I am on the downhill side of my sixties. Isn’t 60+ something your parents were – or your grandparents? Never you – right? How can it be? Our parents and grandparents are gone – or at least most of them are gone now. If you were born of long-living kinfolk, you may still have a parent around – well into their nineties – perhaps even 100.
My mother would have been 100 next December. She passed at 84 in 2008 peacefully in her sleep.
Whenever I hear myself cough, I hear the same harmonics in my cough that I heard from my mother’s larynx thousands of times when she was alive. When my oldest son laughs – I hear my mother’s laughter. My beautiful niece, who is nearly 40, is a reflection of my mother’s beauty.
Are you beginning to get the picture? Each of us is a miracle of evolution – survival. Each of us is the result of the amazing fluid process of genetics. We are each the sum total of who our ancestors were. Look at your hands and see your grandmother’s. Blow your nose and hear the same resonance of your father’s when he blew his. Behold your receding hairline and see the ol’ man’s. Blow up in the heat of anger and recall your grandfather’s demeanor when you were in trouble.
I hear a lot of you bemoaning the passage of time. We’re not young anymore – not by any means. We were the youth movement a half century ago. We were never going to grow old. Never trust anyone over 30. Remember that? Old was something the generations before us faced – but never us. And here we are – lamenting the passage of time and old age.
Well consider this – and feel good about it. Life is best when viewed as a book of chapters, only you’re not allowed to page back. You’re only allowed to turn back the pages via pictures, home movies, tape recordings, video and your sweet memory.
As you enter life’s twilight, embrace the moment and the wisdom you’ve gained via experience and all of life’s ups and downs.
You’ve survived…
Boomer Journey... 