What Are You Going to Do When You Grow Old?
A question we rarely ask
I turned sixty recently. I’m not old. But in just days after my birthday a routine ECG showed a result that has netted me a couple of extra tests and a time set up with a cardiologist. It may be nothing. It may be something. Whatever it is, it has me thinking about what I want to do, and how I want to be, in these next years.
We ask, “What are you going to do when you grow up?” But we rarely ask, “What are you going to do when you grow OLD?” Why not?
‘I like your style’
Said a young man in a group of young people recently as we were walking down the street to a Jazz Festival event. Did he mean the fact that we’re both grey-haired but out of the house after eight o’clock? Or the fact that we move along at a good pace? Or that we’re old and holding hands? I didn’t ask; we were hustling along, and I went into pause-mode when he spoke up, leaning out from his group to look at me directly.
I did say “thank you.” I appreciate when young people reach out to speak. This is not the first time. There was another time when another young man said something positive about my long grey hair. Again, it was a time of music; my friend and I were walking out of an amazing evening of music at Vancouver’s favourite venue, The Commodore…
