Ever since I was born, I have been getting older. Better than the alternative, as the old chestnut goes. I'm going to be a year older on my birthday, one month from today, whether I'm ready for it or not.
I'm walking now, instead of running. I proved to myself that I could, and I have. And I did. I'm walking 2 1/2 - 3 miles about three times a week.
I do not have a sedentary job. Some days I walk my ten thousand steps just in the course of my work. I've keep my weight (mostly) down, although it could still go down a little. Well okay, a lot. But I am a pretty healthy specimen, all things considered.
I'm not a weakling, but my hands aren't as strong as they used to be. My hands, yes, my fingers and wrists are lacking stamina. Not what I have been expecting. I can't open my soft drink bottles as easily as I used to. A gallon of milk? What's up with that? It's irritating, I tell ya.
I am also really smart. But it is obvious to me that I'm not as quick as I used to be. I am learning a new routine at work. It's not hard, you don't have to have a degree to do this stuff (and I have a couple of those), but it just seems to be taking me a little while longer to get the routine down than it might have just a couple of years ago.
And I don't like this, not one little bit.
Okay, now I've vented, and in the spirit of my stated goal with this blog, I need to clarify that I am secretly sort of excited to be turning sixty.
Sixty. Sixty.
I sort of like the sound of it. Sixty is wise. Sixty is seasoned.
Guilt, which used to be my constant companion, has left me for a younger, more attractive woman.
Sixty is the adolescence of old age. Like a teenager, I can't wait to see what's next, I am still deciding what I want to do when I "grow up".
Virgil wrote, Haec olim meminisse iuvabit, which according to Robert Fagles*, translates to, "A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this.". Virgil may have only been referring to Aeneas' troublesome journey, but life is full of ups and downs, and at sixty, I look back on it all with joy, or at least I try to.
I'm laughing as I write this, because, really, how many of my younger readers read Virgil, in Latin, in high school? But that's a commentary on the educational system in this country, and the subject of another blog post, on another day.
And there, dear reader, is another wonderful thing about turning sixty. I can now officially call myself a curmudgeon. Tee hee.
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*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fagles
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