Squamish, British
Columbia
Watercolour and crayon
Charlene Brown: Painting based on a photograph credited to Destination BC/Mitch Winton that
appeared on the cover of the Summer 2021 issue of Right Sizing magazine
I recently read a terrific article in Crow’s Feet by Ruby Lee. She had surveyed her friends on Facebook and compiled a list of the 10 things about being young that they miss the most. I think most of the replies came from people approaching 70.
You may want to go through them to see how they compare to your own observations about aging. I know I certainly did.
I’m happy to say that there are several things on the list that I’m not yet missing, like:
·
being able
to get up off the floor (although I’ll admit I haven’t tried it ‘no hands’
lately)
·
having my
original body parts, except for small parts of most of my teeth. (I’m not
counting other missing things like a gall bladder or my wisdom teeth because they
haven’t been replaced)
·
being able
to eat anything I want (but then I never did want to eat spicy stuff that
started to hurt before you even swallowed it)
·
having
good eyesight and hearing (in fact, since I had my cataracts done, my eyesight
is the best it’s been since I turned forty (in 1982)
·
being able
to walk barefoot
- being able to stay up all night and still function the next day.
Throughout my fifties we lived in Dubai, where a lot of things didn’t
even start until well into the cool of the evening. When we returned to Canada, I was happy to
revert to dining at unfashionable hours in broad daylight.
The list also mentioned:
- thinking that I knew everything
I think they meant
that, although they realized many years ago that they didn’t know everything, until
fairly recently they continued believing they could figure out anything they
didn’t already know. At that time, it
became apparent (to me anyway) that there are certain things that millennials were born
knowing and the rest of us will never figure out.
I’m hoping that one of the things on Ruby Lee’s list that’s also on my ‘missing’ list was more pandemic-caused than age-related:
- being impulsive and deciding to do things on the spur of the moment
I used to go to
Squamish and Calgary, where our daughters and their families live, a lot – not exactly on the spur of the moment, but pretty much whenever I felt like it. This applied
especially to Squamish (pictured above) which is only 90 miles from here as the
crow flies (much longer via a 2-hour
ferry, three bridges, one tunnel, downtown Vancouver, and the Sea-to-Sky
Highway, but still… ) Now that the
barriers between Health Regions are being lifted, I’m about to find out if I
can resume being impulsive.
Finally, there are a couple of things on the list that I too am definitely missing:
- having infinite energy (not that I ever had that – what I miss is having any energy at all some days).
- the feeling that the world is at my feet and that I have all the time in the world to explore it. Okay, this is a scary one, but I’m pretty sure I still have time and enough energy to explore quite a few more things.
I inferred that there were some things about being young that Ruby Lee doesn’t miss at all, from her summary statement:
“It took me a long time to get to
the place where I am now. Even though my body is starting to have issues and I
can’t lose weight, I don’t want to go through those life lessons that got me to
where I am now.”
And with that, I agree
completely.
