Being in the late evening of life we learn to reflect, to meditate on things lost and gained, to contemplate a society alien to the one we knew as children. But it doesn’t mean engagement in the world is less
As I slide into my ninth decade there are many things I regret, and some days the list is endlessBeing in the late evening of life we learn to reflect, to meditate on things lost and gained, to contemplate a society alien to the one we once knew. But ageing does not mean retreating from the worldA young male writer turned 60 recently and complained about getting old. Please, I thoughtI’ve unwound nine-tenths of my mortal coil, don’t tell me about getting old, young whippersnapper.
What I do know is that the centrepiece of life is family, the anchor that has kept me afloat in often challenging seas I think especially of the women riding the wave of their ninth decade now – what a generation of women this was and is. We were formed by key social events of the times – the advent of TV, the swinging 60s, the pill, the Vietnam war, Vatican II, second-wave feminism … and that just takes us to the beginning of the 80s.
A standout gift of ageing is time – time to be still, to notice the shapes and colours of the world, to remember, to understand our failures so that we might empathise with others. My memory bank is like Jack Horner’s plum pudding, only a fabled magic one. I put in my thumb and pull out some long-forgotten joy or near miss and they keep on coming, too fast to catalogue.
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