What is it with old people wanting to either rule the world or tell me about their latest operation.

As I have said before, the ailments of the elderly are often serious but rarely interesting.

Just learn to love your life… now.

What are the glory years.

I think they are between 25 and 45.  That seems like a very short window of opportunity, but it is in that period between I don’t know shit and I don’t give a shit

As an ‘older’ person (50+) surely we have contributed through the hard years, with long hours, innovation, promotions, the hard slog and trying to make a difference in a world where everybody is trying to do the same.  The next generation is coming!  …. and they are coming in their own way.

Just the other day I was sitting at a committee meeting with the same people I have been sitting on that committee with for the last 25 years!  When we all joined the committee we were appalled by the ‘old bastards’ who were doing the job then and slowly pushed them
from the committee so that we could drag it into something worthwhile for our generation. We were young, smarter than them, more motivated than them, and in all honesty got
things done!  I pointed out to the committee members the other day that we are all now ten years older than the ‘old bastards’ were when we pushed them out.  I also reminded them that when they speak to the young people this committee allegedly ‘serves’ – after we have passed on our little gem of knowledge and walked away thinking we have imparted some real wisdom, don’t listen too closely as you will hear “Silly old bastard”
being said.

I just think that the things we do in our life (as with friends) are for reasons and seasons and occasionally, very occasionally for that entire life.

It is similar in that there are jobs (the people you meet as friends on holidays), vocations (the people who love what you do and they love doing it with you) and true passions (the childhood friend who you still hang out with and couldn’t imagine them not being in your life).

It is realising which one you are doing that is important.  I am sure lots of us wake up and realise that we have suddenly found out that the friends we met on holidays are in our life all the time and we are not on holidays anymore and it is just not the same and secretly we wish they would just go away (why did I give them our address!?)

It is the same with the ‘glory years’.  We hang onto them and then suddenly realise (or actually most people don’t realise) that they are over and now you are just the old guy on the committee who talks shit and wont retire!

I was in the pub the other day (a serious part of my post 50 vocation) when I saw a guy who I used to work with and barely recognised him.  No, it wasn’t because he looked old and wanted to tell me about a rash that wouldn’t go away – it was because he looked so good, younger, fitter, healthier, happier.  Why?  He was 9 days (he also told me the hours) until he officially retired from a ‘vocation’ he had been doing for 40 years.  He said it was time to retire and he was moving onto the next part of his life.  He didn’t bitch about his working life but said how great it was and how much he had loved it, but now was the time to go, it wasn’t his world anymore – by the way he was 55!

I know how he feels and am on the cusp of retiring myself.  I am not going away bitter, I am just going away.  Not going out in a blaze of glory, or hanging on as a sad, bitter, pathetic dinosaur – but, slowly stepping out the door, shaking the hands of the ‘friends’ I will never see again, remembering the good times, allowing the bad times to fade and leaving it all in the hands of those like me back them, living the glory years.

POST SCRIPT
I am not dead, just different!  The ending of the glory years are the beginning of something more special.  Spending time with yourself, being in the world and not pushed along buy it.  I am also here if you need me, I have the time to help and the time to talk – not the time to child care and baby sit by the way!  I managed that myself so can you.  It is the time for turning learning into wisdom, if for no one else other than myself.  It is time for noticing the world.  It is a time for peacefulness, spiritualness (that can be anything you want), laughter and remembering.  It is a a time for phone calls to friends or people who you would like to be your friends (not people you met on holidays – or maybe now it is the time for them?).  It is time for phone calls, visits and letters to those who need them.  It is time for thankfulness and forgiveness.

It is the post ‘glory years’ where the real rewards actually are, you just a have to look and stop telling people about your next Doctors appointment!