Photo by Lan Gao on Unsplash.
When I lived in New Mexico I had a neighbor who was in her early eighties. She lived in a big house with her husband. She did all the housework and gardening. She drove a small truck. She had two cats.
One day I heard someone say to her, “I’m tired. I’m sixty, after all.”
“Sixty?” she scoffed. “When I was sixty I could do anything. I had all the energy I could want.”
I think of her sarcasm when I read articles by people who describe what it’s like to be sixty.
Here are some recent titles of articles.
Why I’m still betting on myself in my sixties
Why I haven’t given up on myself in my sixties
Can you start a new career (second job) in your sixties
Don’t do these stupid things in your sixties
A man in his sixties is running marathons
6 things I hate about growing older (the author is 64)
The problem is, my neighbor was right. A healthy sixty-year-old will work out in a gym, run marathons, go dancing, go hiking, and get in and out of cars with ease, The sixty-year-old probably won’t have any health problems or even health scares.
Of course, some sixty-year-olds will have back pain. Some will have genuine physical problems, like cancer and heart disease.
But if you’re going to write about being sixty, make sure there aren’t any 80-somethings in your audience. They’ll think you’re just a kid.
Anyway, there’s no such thing as a typical 60-year-old. Some 60-year-olds are running marathons and climbing mountains. Some are stuck in wheelchairs. Some face seriously critical illnesses. Some have a busy, fulfilled life; some are lonely.
The experience of one person is just that. One person. You may or may not relate to their story.
These articles about suffering in your sixties are disturbing because they reinforce a stereotype. They encourage employers to push people towards retirement. They encourage those same employers not to hire anyone in their sixties.
My 80-something neighbor used to admonish me about my cavalier attitude towards the medical profession. She was horrified that I didn’t go for screening tests.
She didn’t convince me. She expressed her horror while she was smoking a cigarette. She went through two packs a day with no heart disease and no cancer.
It wouldn’t have occurred to her to make age-based decisions. She was healthy, she believed in doctors, and she loved taking care of her big house, her husband, and her cats. She didn’t care much for her grown children. And that was that.
“Who cares what your life is like at age sixty?” she might have said. “If you’re feeling old at 60, what’s going to happen at 70 and 80 and maybe 90?”
I moved away while she was still healthy and still in her early 80s. She was still driving and smoking. When I looked her up for this article, I found she had died “peacefully” at age 88. Not bad for someone who smoked 2 packs a day. Not bad for someone who’d lost a lot of her relatives to heart disease long before I knew her.
She was living proof that age is nothing but a mindset. A very firm, unforgiving, highly disciplined mindset. And I never forgot that as I grew closer to the age she was when I knew her.
