Still Clickin

A couple of days ago, my friend, Ron, gave me a great gift. He showed me the way to the sea. Standing on the top of a bluff, we could look 150 feet straight down to see the waves lapping the shoreline. But without wings, those last 150 feet were intimidating. Ron said, “follow me.”

He stepped through a slight notch in the land, and a path opened to reveal a series of dips in the earth that acted like steps. These dips were well worn by others that had trod them before, and step-by-step we ventured down the side of the bluff. Climbing over a fallen tree that had been claimed by the wind, a set of train tracks and a rock wall, we found ourselves on the beach itself with the open sea before us. The sea did not disappoint.

Filling our lungs with the rich essence of low tide mixed with the clean scent of salt, I knew I had found my way home again. The sea has always been in my blood, which was leached from different European shorelines. Since my early years, I have always felt most at home with the sea - in it, on it, or under it.

Two days later, while walking along the beach, I encountered some old shipwrecks along the shoreline. It was then that I met Curt. He was warning me to stay off his property, which extended down the water’s edge - wherever the tide decided it would be that day. Curt’s family had always lived by the sea, and we started talking about the differences between the shores on the East Coast, where I grew up, and the West Coast, where Curt did.

I was relating to Curt how, on the East Coast, we would awake in the morning to the smashing sound of clam shells being dropped from above by the sea gulls, who would then have their feast. I was surprised that the same thing did not happen in the West. Curt revealed that it did happen when he was young, but now the clams have all but disappeared.

It was then I realized the biggest difference between the two coasts, i.e. railroads. Because the East Coast is generally irregular and flat, the railroads were located a few miles inland. That precious dancing line between land and sea, where nutrients and life thrive, has been bisected by the railroads on the West Coast. Faced with a continuous series of bluffs, the rails were built right along the shore. The nutrients are blocked, the clams are dying out, and even the orcas, much further up the food chain, are disappearing.

The sea is truly a gift, but like any living thing, it requires respect and nourishment. Ironically, someone could make the same observation about senior citizens.

NB. Click below to make a comment. Even better, expand on the original article by going to wikiSenior and clicking on ‘edit’.

When dealing with the first layer of the retirement lifecycle, the big issues, i.e. finances, health, real estate, etc., all seem to take center stage. Change forces us to re-evaluate prior assumptions and make suitable adjustments. But once those adaptations have been made, the more subtle aspects of retirement seep into our daily rhythms, i.e. limitations, loneliness, and purpose.

Living life with a clear sense of purpose is always a challenge at any age. Defining careers, embracing families, and giving back can stretch anyone to the point that they can lose the sense of purpose. Learning Selfless Love, that ultimate purpose of life, can take a back seat to the urgent, the critical, and the just-a-sec of daily survival.

But in retirement, purpose can become an even more elusive goal. If much of your everyday world was focused upon the daily challenges of family and work, then living with fewer demands from both of these sectors can leave you with an unwelcome sense of emptiness.

Retirement gifts you with that rare gift of Time. The basic question returns, “What are you going to do with your time?” To any intelligent person, it quickly becomes obvious that drifting is not an acceptable answer. But the right answer for one particular person, a.k.a. you, can be elusive. The blunt reality is that you are demanding a better answer for yourself than you have accepted in the past. You can have grown to become very comfortable with the big picture of your life, but stymied by some of the everyday details. It takes some work to figure it all out.

The details are not trivial.

• Family - Your role as a grandparent is simply not as demanding as that of a parent. Once the grandchildren are in school, their schedules don’t permit as much “together time” with grandparents.
• Work - Because of the “age hurdle”, the choices for an engagement in some productive work activity seem to be segmented into (1) unimaginative, low-scale paid work, or (2) potentially more creative, challenging, and satisfying, but unpaid, volunteer work.
• Travel - Can be a very meaningful activity if it is a learning experience as well as a shared moment that can be a gift to that special someone. The erosion of the financial markets, however, may now constrain your range of choices.
• Social Activities - For example, golf, tennis, or bridge, can be pleasant activities for sharing time with family and friends. In and of themselves, however, these pursuits can lack staying power and purpose for many people.

What to do?

1. Identify the top five things you love to do.
2. Identify the top five things in which you excel.
3. If the “top five” approach doesn’t reveal a direction for you, talk with friends and relatives who know you and may have heard of something you might find interesting.
4. If you still are debating with yourself, look for something in which you can get engaged quickly. Try it, and see what you learn. If it doesn’t work, try a different option. It may take a few tries, but it is better than procrastinating.
5. Good luck with your efforts!

NB. Click below to make a comment. Even better, expand on the original article by going to wikiSenior and clicking on ‘edit’.

“A User’s Guide for Senior Living”

In the waiting room at the dentist’s, the lady in the next chair acted tired but seemed to want to talk. The conversation turned to downsizing, and she said, “Oh, I wish we had done that. It’s too late for us now. Our big old house has become a burden, but my husband’s health is such that we can’t make any change now.”

That comment sounded an alarm bell. As seniors we have to become highly sensitive new demands:

1. Change - We have to face the fact that our senior years, like those of childhood, are a period of dramatic changes. Although cruise control can work well during middle age, it is a mistake to try to use it during our senior years. There is simply too much change.
2. Information - Coping with that amount of change requires careful thought and access to a lot of new information. Although the Internet is awash with information for seniors, it is scattered, disorganized, and often confusing. There is no comprehensive, organized user’s guide.
3. Perspective - At 25, we saw life very differently than we did at 5; at 45 differently than 25, and at 65 differently than 45. For this new information to be truly helpful, it must be presented from our own age perspective.

The aim of WikiSenior is to be that pragmatic User’s Guide that addresses these new demands. Ideally, this reference will contain enough information to equip any engaged senior to make practical plans and choices about how they will live their lives during these years of change. It is not only targeted at the Top Concerns of seniors, it also addresses those daily concerns, e.g. “Shall we eat out or in?” that we all face everyday.

What can you do?

1. Share the insights you have learned through your own life experience. To be effective, this free guide about the challenges of senior living must be authored by the real experts of senior living, i.e. seniors themselves.
2. Click on Write experiences, share wisdom, collaborate & author Topics to learn how it works. If you’ve just solved an issue, identify it and tell us what worked. You don’t need to be a computer expert. You just need to know how to type. . . one or two fingers, or more.