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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Old Salts
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
I recently turned sixty-five, and the experience has made me feel old in a very sudden, overnight sort of way, despite my being healthy enough to run regularly and pass other (skin–tight-lycra-clad) runners a third my age.
This is no doubt partly due to the fact that in Australia, at least, sixty-five has always been the traditional age of retirement, and while I will continue to work part-time, I am also going to get some pension and super.
And then there are our friends who have moved into retirement villages.
It is also, I think, to do with my awareness that so many people I greatly admire were dead by sixty-five, which seems to suggest that if you haven’t achieved anything by that age, you have left it too late.
Yes, I regularly hear of people my age and older who are climbing Everest, cycling across Asia, starting up business enterprises, marrying women forty years their junior and starting new families (not interested in that!), writing books, learning languages, becoming missionaries, planting churches and earning doctorates (though not usually all the foregoing at once, save in exceptional instances), but as Doctor Johnson said, “Sensation is sensation”.
Any Senior Shippies got any experiences or advice to share?
[ 04. August 2014, 04:38: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Ah, magic words 'experience' and 'advice' - sounds like All Saints.
Bus passes out for the journey.
Firenze
Heaven Host
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
I reached 65 as well earlier this year and so far it has been okay. My knees haven't been up to much for 20 years or so so I am a little physically limited but I can walk without a cane most of the time so I'm doing all right.
I think it may make a difference that I was retired early through ill-health so have been a pensioner since I was 48 but now I get UK state retirement pension as well.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Yes, I'm entering the twilight years, or whatever, but I try to take it a day at a time. My dad made it to 93 so who knows but I might follow him but I am ready whenever the grim reaper appears. I hope it is not tonight as I have plans for tomorrow - I like the image from J K Rowling's The Tales of Beadle the Bard where the guy who had escaped Death for so long finally meets him and greets him as an old friend and they go off together, happily.
I still find life fun and remember a glorious lunchtime in early 2001 on a train in the foothills of the Himalaya when an also early retired friend and Himself and I were trundling along to the next town just for the hell of it and suddenly realised it was getting up and going to work time on a Monday morning in Britain and we just smiled and agreed we'd got the better deal.
A little parental anecdote: My dad retired a few months early on his doctor's advice but went back a couple of years later to his old firm's Christmas "Do" for pensioners. As he was there a contemporary of his came up and said to him "Oh Ronnie, don't you wish you were back at work?" Apparently my dad looked at him, said "You always were a silly bugger." He then walked out and never went back.
That man had style!
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I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
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What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
As for me, I turn 66 at the end of the week. Since I was startled to live past 50 and gobsmacked to have survived a vicious cancer at 53, I decided to retire 11 years ago.
Best decision I ever made. Pensions are reasonable and I am busy trying to spend most of it before I die. Not that I expect to do so anytime really soon, but I am mindful that many of my neurologically-challenged contemporaries are long dead and buried.
At this point in my life I carry on as best I can, keeping busy, but also quite aware that things may change, suddenly, and without warning. My immediate family is not especially renowned for its longevity.
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
Miss Amanda will turn 70 next January. I don't regret for a moment having retired at age 62, but I do spend more time than I probably should fantasizing about what I would do if I had more money.
What I have to do is face up to the fact that I have what I have, that it will probably have to last me at least 15 years more, and decide exactly where it is that I want to go in those 15 years.
That said, I'm keeping busy taking courses (voice and Spanish) at a local community college, singing in a community choral group, serving as lead editor of the MW page on the Ship, and traveling as my budget allows.
What I am determined to do is leave this world before I reach the point where my father is now: 94 years old, incontinent of urine, unable to walk, unable to see well enough to read.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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JB
Independent Thinker
# 1776
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Posted
The Motherboard and I will be approaching our seventieth in a few months. Motherboard arranged with our children and grandchildren to come to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta and told other relatives they were welcome to join the celebration. It looks like a crowd of fifteen.
I still work, but part time, and ride Whimsy when possible; Motherboard putters in the garden and volunteers and does her quilting. And we both love travel, and photographic expeditions with shipmates.
I guess our advice is to keep busy. You will not believe the people who need help and a "seasoned" person to help out. We came from a different era where we actually worked for our paychecks and were not seduced by a new Prada handbag, a Maserati or new clothing for every second of the day. We saved, we made do with what we had and we "soldiered on". That's a good model for retirement----when we get around to it
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You live, you learn
You learn, you live
Posts: 2588 | From: Land of Enchantment | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nicodemia
WYSIWYG
# 4756
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Posted
Ah, 65 years young! Twenty-five years ago for me now. I have lots of regrets that I didn't do things I had really wanted to do when I had the health and agility to do them!
So, my advice would be - keep your mind active, keep your body active, and if there is something you have always yearned to do, then get up and go! You never know what tomorrow will bring.
Posts: 4544 | From: not too far from Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2003
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
You're all familiar with this poem?
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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