"Those are young people's dreams," my friend told me at breakfast the other morning.
She had been catching me up on the plans of another of her friends. Our age, this woman had recently retired from the State Department and enrolled in law school. "She wants to work for the Innocence Project," my friend said, "but the average case there takes 15 years. She'll be in her late 70s by then."
Another of her friends, also our age, was working on developing an investment property he had purchased. His plan was to build a sustainable community. "He's having trouble with the permitting, though," my friend told me, "and he won't even be able to break ground for another ten years." She shook her head in dismay.
Her advice to both friends was to find something that they could do now. "We do have a shelf life, you know!"
I can see both sides.
By some accounts, 60 is the new 40. A more comfortable life and better health care have combined to put off some of the classic complaints of aging. Sure, I and my contemporaries have a few more aches and pains, and several have even had knee and hip replacement surgery. But such procedures are so commonplace precisely because they promise to get those folks right back out there, as mobile and pain-free as ever. Since aging might feel as dramatic a decline as it once did, there's a temptation to continue operating as if we have many decades ahead of us, instead of just two or three.
My friend is right: we're not going to be around forever., and it is better to focus on the now. But that's always been the case, hasn't it?
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