Our western culture is pre-occupied with youth and generally treats ageing as a tragedy. The young things in the media focus on negatives like wrinkles, memory loss and mobility issues and promote the belief that being over 60 is all bad news.
Fortunately, much of what they believe is wrong and we can only hope that maturity will bring greater wisdom. The 60s can be a great time of life, especially if you’re reasonably healthy. It’s largely a matter of attitude.
You can see this time as the start of a new stage in your life with lots of new opportunities to explore, or you can take the negative view and see it as the end of your productive life.
Here are just a few reasons why being over 60 has lots going for it –
- You’ve had plenty of time to get to know yourself and hopefully you have been able to make some improvements along the way. You’re comfortable in your skin and hopefully like the person you see in the mirror.
- You’ve got some good friends you’ve had for many years and you know that you’re all there for each other when times are tough.
- Your career is behind you, or soon will be, so you don’t have to play the corporate games and worry about office politics. You don’t have to please your boss, your shareholders, your customers or your staff.
- Most of your difficult life decisions have been made. You’ve made some good and bad decisions in the past and learnt to live with them. There’s no sense in worrying about them any longer as you can’t change anything. All that stress is behind you.
- The mortgage is either repaid or well on the way and the costs of bringing up kids have ceased.
- Hopefully you children have grown into reasonable human beings and can now appreciate the stress they caused you in their youth. If they have turned out well, that’s something to be proud of. If they haven’t, there’s probably not much more you can do about it.
- You can enjoy your grandchildren and then give them back to their parents.
- You can travel around Australia or around the world and find experiences that will excite and amaze you.
- You can do all the things that you’ve had to postpone for most of your life.
- You’re old enough to get all the great discounts available to older citizens.
I can think of more reasons to be grateful for being at this stage of your life. I’m sure you can too. Why not give it a try.
Paul McKeon