I lived my younger years with three anchors: to live in service, in adventure and in love.
My service was 60 plus years in many fulfilling projects in Israel and numerous community and political leadership roles in the US. My adventure with long treks in exotic countries, climbing mountains in the Himalayas and elsewhere, constant tennis and bicycle touring everywhere.
My love was always a growing path with dearest Lois, three sons, then their wives, then grandchildren and ever-widening circles of relationships.
But now as I near 92, my service and adventures are only wonderful memories, never to be lived again at those levels. Today there are new experiences like arthritic aches, knees a little weaker, a few strange pains in my back, and a serious loss of balance.
But my aging days are filled with much love and joy. My wife of 69 plus years is still my true love, and I will never understand how I was so smart at age 22 to grab her for life. My family is well. I love and feel loved, and I am aware of having lived a life filled with much excitement, a reasonable success, and feel I have given my contribution to tikkun olam – repairing the world. I still support the liberal humanistic causes as in the past, only today this support is more financial and less physical.
A gift of my senior years has been a contentment level I had never felt when younger. I had always been too busy, constantly on to the next thing. Never stopping to meditate and revel in the life I had created. Now age and perhaps a little wisdom have directed this change in how I live. I have time to read for pleasure and not just for data. Time to watch a beautiful sunset over the Pacific. To move slower and open my eyes to so much of what I had been missing.
For me the overriding emotion at this time in my life is a magic word —gratitude. A deeply felt satisfying joy for all the blessings that fill my heart.
Growing old ain’t so bad.
