Yesterday, I found out that I'm eligible to apply for Medicare in four months. Despite the fact that this information is readily available online and that pre-planning for retirement (for real this time) is on my radar, I was in shock. I know my age, but...really?
After making a New Year's resolution best summed up by the graphic at left, I was completely unprepared for a crash landing at the intersection of "someday" and "in a few months." (Hooray for successfully buying into my own resolution?) I sat in my chair for a few moments, stunned by this sudden revelation of reality.
Today I was scheduled to attend two meetings: a webinar on Medicare and a session with our financial planner, two meetings that kicked off my screeching halt at the intersection at the corner of "Someday"and "May." The first one (the webinar) was incredibly informative and left me feeling a lot less dazed and oddly optimistic -- so much so that I dashed off a quick email to HR to thank them for making the webinar available.
Age is a funny thing. Most of us spend a good chunk of time dissatisfied with the age we are. First, we're too young to do the things that look so appealing, then we're too old to do those same things (along with a few others) and finally, we begin to feel as though age has not only caught up with us, but it's breathing down our necks in a most uncomfortable way.
That last feeling kicked off my New Year's resolution (one among several, for the record). I had caught myself using age as an excuse, or making snide remarks about my own age -- things that would make me angry if other people said them. A role in a recent theatre production included some of those cracks, and was, in fact, part of the impetus for the resolution. Sure, I'm older than I ever was (that's pretty much how it works), but I'm also younger than I'll ever be again. And wasting that second perspective by hastening my interpretation of the math just seemed silly.
I'm old enough to know what I like and what I don't like, what I wish for and what I no longer care about. I don't need an excuse to not do the stuff I don't want to do, and I certainly don't need a number to keep me from doing the things I've dreamed of doing.
And suddenly, somewhere between yesterday's stunned realization and the end of today's webinar, a glimmer of hope about new possibilities began to emerge. Yesterday, I felt old and headed for an ending. But what if that ending is really a new beginning?
Definitely something worth thinking about.
No comments:
Post a Comment