Reflections at 60

It’s now just after 11:30, in the waning moments of my 60th birthday.   There’s been much to think about today, pondering the very fact that this  milestone has been reached, for one thing.   I remember the two parties given for me at two of my previous decade markers:  the 40th at my last newspaper job and the office I will never forget and where I spent so many late hours putting out a weekly newspaper.   The black ballons and cake with RIP on it and all the joking around about being old at 40.   You know that scenario.  And, then, my 50th birthday suprise party at my current workplace, given by co-workers with a surefire sense of humor, to say the least.  Gag gifts and jokes abounded.  The BIG 50!   I remember it like it was yesterday.  Lots of laughs and fun.  It was a good day.

April 5, 2011 — now this has been a quieter day with a few calls from family members and a dear old friend who never forgets my birthday.  I am not nearly so good at remembering other’s birthdays.    I really didn’t want to think too much about this one, but that’s not possible at these seminal events that mark decades of life.   A co-worker gave me a nice gift and card and my former co-worker and dear friend who was in on the 50th gala invited me out for lunch today.

I was 48 when I started writing here at OD, and now here it is 12 years later.  What a ride!  I like to think of all these hundreds of entries over the years as a selective memoir — my incomplete and partial story, sometimes intimate and raw, but mostly an optimistic and positive telling of not just events in the story of my life, but glimpses into the inner working of my mind and thoughts.   I’ve explored my feelings here as much as I have wanted to — enough, but not too much or too terribly personal.   I am okay with that.  There are just some things I choose not to write about even though I realize deep down it would probably be more therapeutic than telling or embarrassing.

Tonight I look at my hands and see the wrinkles that were not there ten years, or even five years ago.    I look at the gray hair and dark and somewhat melancholic eyes.   I have suffered and endured a lot in these six decades of life.   But I have experienced so much counterbalancing joy and happiness, even though those strong emotions are so fleeting.  I know I am not ancient or wizened or really that old.   Age truly is a state of mind and a reflection of your outlook and attitude toward life.   I am basically an optimist, so in that sense, life is on an even keel for the most part, despite the troughs and valleys.   I am not really as different from others as I used to think I was.   That’s one of the lessons that come later in life.

I will continue in whatever time I have remaining to embrace life and its mystery and beauty, complexity and simplicity.   A spring day recently in a garden full of flowers in bloom and new green in trees rejuvenates me and makes me more than ever grateful for all the rich blessings bestowed on me, not least of which is the fact that I can so fully appreciate the beauty all around me.   I am so glad I never take any of that for granted.

I have always been a rather serious and solitary person, and I used to feel sort of guilty about that, like I was supposed to be some other way or some other person, or do more things  socially, and the like.  But now I don’t worry about those things.   I rarely feel lonely.  I have what I need.  The rest is, as it always has been, up to me.