Looking Back at Life

I just celebrated my 95th birthday last week. Honestly, I never thought I would make it this far in life…in fact, I figured I would have passed away many years ago. But here I still was, feeling good, still relatively active, having what I would consider to be a pretty good life.

I somehow managed to avoid the diseases that most of us might get as life goes into the years beyond what would even be considered ‘elderly’. No cancer, no diabetes, no Alzheimer's…nothing like that had ever crossed my path.

Most of my friends and family had long since passed away. I had never married and had no kids, so I really had been on my own for most of my life. I never felt it to be a personal burden or somehow depressing to live alone and certainly never wanted to be a burden on anyone else, either. Thankfully I had always managed fine without any real help.

But as I sat back and reflected on the past…my past, specifically…it dawned on me just how much of my life had really been wasted by worrying about what never came, and instead concentrating on what I had already done years before. When I turned 60, this was a constant struggle in my mind. Like most, I always thought about how much I had enjoyed being young…how much I wished I could be young again, experiencing the things that had brought me so much joy when I was just 19, 22, 25, 30…what I would give to be back there again, reliving those moments, correcting the mistakes I had made at that time…it was all in there, every day of my life back at that time.

But that was when I was 60. Along with wishing I’d be able to revisit my younger days, I was also convinced that I would die soon…very soon, as a matter of fact. Every slight pain or uncomfortable feeling might have convinced me that the ‘end must suddenly be near’. I attributed every one of these pains to some disease that would no doubt kill me within the next 6 months, or a year, or perhaps 2 or 3 years if I could be so lucky.

These 2 trains of thought existed concurrently every day back then…as a result, this would make my life miserable almost every hour of every day. At this stage, was I a failure? Had my life been wasted, and by now was it simply too late to fix it? There never seemed to be an escape to the combination. I longed to be able to somehow relive those wonderful days of my youth, and at the very same time was absolutely convinced I would never see 65, much less 70. Why would I want to anyway, I thought? By then, I was sure I would have cancer, and spend my remaining days in absolute pain and hopeless misery, which only magnified my desire to be young again and able to enjoy the things I had done and experienced all those years before.

Thankfully, it finally came to a point where I just stopped doing this…I don’t know why, really. But one day I stopped thinking about how wonderful my life would be if I could somehow relive my younger days again. This should have been shut down almost immediately…you obviously cannot achieve the impossible, regardless of how much you might have wished it to be possible. Those days were long gone…instead, I started to feel I had been lucky enough to have lived them in the first place, lucky to have been able to enjoy them and to have them forever in my memory. Many people never had the opportunities I had back then. Beyond that, most people I knew never made it past 50, 60, or 70. Those people were friends and family members, in fact. It dawned on me that all of them would have gladly traded places with me to be able to experience what I had been able to experience, or for that matter simply still be alive to experience more of a life they never got the chance to live. I felt lucky…I was somehow still here.

Now, at 95 years old, I look back at all that had happened AFTER I had turned 60 so long ago. I had had a wonderful life, to be sure. Over the years since I had met new people, made many new friends, and was not anywhere near as alone as I felt I would be, and was generally a very happy person. I was still able to do many of the things I did, even in my youth. Music had always been such a huge part of my life, and at 95 that had not diminished at all. I still could think about things that fascinated me even when I was just a child. In other words, my life was really just as rich as it had been all those years before. I just had never realized it back when I turned 60 so many years before.

I had managed to put all that other negative stuff out of my mind. I learned to live each day on its own…take whatever that day gave me and enjoy it. There were also many ‘not so good' days in the mix, to be sure. But I learned over time to ignore those days and concentrate on what would come the next day. I had never looked back at the past in the same way I had been so obsessed with it at 60. Whatever it was, it was in the past; good, bad, or indifferent. It didn’t matter all that much anymore. There were no longer any regrets; no ‘I really wish I had handled that differently’ anymore. I had learned how to handle things a lot better than I had in the past. Of course, I still made mistakes, but I just didn’t dwell on them as much as I used to when I was younger. Overall, it had simply made me a much happier person.

Perhaps the best thing I learned was we should really never think of ourselves as being any older, regardless of whatever age we happen to be. Actually, despite the cliche, it really is just a number, if you simply choose to think of it like that. We might not move as quickly or easily as we once did; we might have some new pains to deal with, but beyond that, not much else has really changed. Even at 95, I still have the same feelings, thoughts, ad desires that I had 70 years before. Time cannot kill those things unless we let it happen. You might learn to handle things a little differently, perhaps better, but overall you will always be the same person as you might have been when you were just a kid. Over the last 35 years, I had learned to simply embrace every day and every hour the best way I could…that is what life should truly be about. Always be happy with who and what you are, regardless of your age or what anyone else might have to say about how you are living it. It is after all your life…live it the way you want.