AGING GRATEFULLY: Ten (super cool) Things About Turning Sixty

“Something happens at 60: it becomes impossible not to say what you think. Also, you get more beautiful.” Marianne Williamson

 

1.  In general, you just give fewer fu—well, let’s just say you care less what others think.   Enjoy this.

2. For a while if you are lucky, people think you are younger and look genuinely surprised when you tell them your age. This doesn’t always work, especially in LA where people’s surprise might be from thinking you were older.

3. If you have survived a serious illness, or lost people close to you or learned to handle a serious health condition, or…okay, that’s everybody. The point is— sixty is a milestone to celebrate. You are here!

4. Mentoring just gets more and more interesting and rewarding. And it doesn’t have to just be professional mentoring, sometimes it can be romantic or practical or interior design advice, all of which should only be doled out when it is specifically requested. But young people might actually think you have something to say. They want to hear about your memories, things you’re learned along your, well, LONG way. You get to impart some wisdom. Especially if these young people are not your own children.

5. Whether you are close to the grandparent stage, it is likely that grandchildren are coming into your friends’ lives or that you get to be a great aunt, or whatever I am to my cousin’s grandchildren. All the fun of bouncing a baby on your lap with none of the sleep deprivation.  And for those shower gifts, you get to go back into the baby stores without dragging a big belly or a baby.

6. You finally truly understand the whole idea of gratitude. Some of my thirty year old yoga instructors are way ahead of me on this, so I may just have been a slow learner. But it’s an awfully sweet place to finally reach. And then this softens you a bit, and you get more interested in helping others, and not being so obsessed with just your own small world.   You might take that extra moment with the older people you come across, recognizing them as the teachers they are and also remembering that, not only were they young once, they also were sixty not so long ago themselves.  They might have a thing or two to share, their own wisdom to impart.   Maybe I am just talking about humility. Because, while in some ways you might be wiser, you also know that you still have so, so much to learn.

7. If you can do a backbend in yoga (or bench lift a certain weight, or still hit that powerful forehand or run that half marathon), people are super impressed.

8. You are closer to life long goals that can only be reached after an accumulation of many years. In my case, I am closer to my goal of being a sweet, little old lady. Well, at least the little and old part. Actually, maybe not little, but definitely short.
9. You either get to throw yourself a BigAss party or take a BigAss trip or just in general feel better about your own big ass if you have one. Because if you are anything like the women in my family, it will suddenly flatten overnight in five years.
10. If you have lots of old friends, it’s likely many of them are turning sixty, too.  Between their trips and parties, it can be a celebration all year.