Month: February 2024

I know the readers of Sixty and Me are scattered all over the globe. In my little corner of the world last week, right outside Washington, DC, we’d been having winter weather. Snow and ice on top of snow and ice and bitterly cold temperatures.

I do not drive in the snow, so when it comes, it often interferes somewhat with my plans, especially on the first day until the roads get cleared.

My husband and I had planned a couple of days’ escape to our new beach home in North Carolina and the night before we were planning to go, we were to get snow.

My inclination was to just postpone it right then and there and not go.

My husband said, “Let’s get up in the morning, see what the roads are like, and make our decision then.”

I’m sure I must have looked at him like he had two heads. But, in theory, that plan seemed reasonable. So, I agreed.

Adjusting to not knowing what I was going to be doing the next day drove me even crazier than I imagined it might.

My Brain

For the majority of my now 62+ years, I have been a woman who needs to be in control and know all that is going to happen so that I can plan for it and be prepared for it!

I talk a lot about how I have been working for the last two years to escape this tendency by engaging the practice of being present. I realized that throughout my life, I had spent so much of my time planning, worrying, and figuring out next steps, that I was never truly present in any moment in my life!

I missed so much joy!

It was amazing how quickly that one statement from my husband, which I agreed with, “Let’s make our decision then,” set me back (in my brain).

How am I going to bed having no idea what I’m doing tomorrow?

But, I did it. And I even slept!

The Next Morning

My husband got up, cleared our driveway, and drove around a little bit to assess the road conditions. I still had no idea what we were going to be doing THAT DAY – I wasn’t packed if we were actually going to go.

At this point, my anxiety about the snow was gone. I didn’t care what we did. I just wanted a decision made and to know what I was doing.

We made the decision to go – and had a great time.

Life Lessons Learned from This Experience

The Value in Being Present

I engaged that practice the night before we left. I had my glass of wine, read my book, played with my dogs, and enjoyed my dinner. I was warm and watching the snow. I slept.

That’s all I needed to do that night. Worrying about the next day and what or might not happen wouldn’t change a thing. Except that it would ruin a perfectly nice evening.

Being present reduced my anxiety considerably. It allowed me to find the joy and gratitude in my evening. In spite of not knowing what I was going to be doing the next day.

I cannot stress the importance of adding this habit to your daily routine – for all women, but particularly those in this community. We tend to miss so much joy when we are worrying, anxious, or trying to achieve perfection.

Know That You Can Do Hard Things

Although in comparison to so many other life circumstances, this was NOT hard, it was hard for me in that moment. I gave up control.

But telling myself that I can do hard things and that I have done much harder things is helpful.

It reminds me that I’m stronger than I give myself credit for.

It Typically Works Out – Whether We Are Controlling It or Not

Sometimes we don’t have to know everything that “might” or “might not” happen in every situation.

Often, we need to relax and allow ourselves to trust the process and more importantly, to trust those around us.

In this seemingly “unimportant/minor” situation, I allowed myself to do something that is NOT me: I allowed myself to go with the flow.

Not only did I survive it, I had a great time with my husband.

Will it be easy for me to do it next time? Not easy, but hopefully easier and easier each time I do it.

We are never too old to grow from these everyday life experiences when we allow ourselves to be present in them.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How easy or hard is it for you to go with the flow? I’d love to hear of any experiences you had where you did or didn’t practice this and how they played out. Do you engage in the practice of being present in your daily life?

We all know that our sense of time changes as we grow older – with everything speeding up at an alarming rate. One of the most notable markers of this is the age of our children – and even more so – our grandchildren.

When We Were Young

I don’t know about you, but when I was a child, time seemed to stretch on forever. If it was Christmas, summer was ages and ages away. You looked forward to being the next age up – to be seven when you were six, and so forth – but didn’t it take a long time to come!

It seemed the natural order of things that time passed slowly and one never thought to question it.

Children and Time

By the time you are in your 30s and 40s, time speeds up a bit, but not that much. Having children in the house keeps you so busy, you don’t think about time as such. Perhaps their birthday parties seem to come around more quickly than yours ever did, or you notice their friends getting taller rather quickly. But somehow there was nothing alarming about the speed of things.

Grandchildren Change So Quickly

But when it comes to grandchildren, everything speeds up so fast you begin to wonder if you have time to enjoy them. They seem to change from toddlers to teenagers in the blink of an eye.

This is particularly the case, I suspect, when you don’t see the grandchildren all that often. We all heard “My, how you’ve grown!” when we were children and thought it was a silly remark. Now, we all probably repeat it ourselves. And buying appropriate presents can be a minefield. It moves amazingly quickly from dolls to make-up, from toy trains to football gear, and for all them to small screens of every kind.

And then they learn so fast. One minute they are working out how to read and the next they are learning French or Mandarin. And they know things you don’t know. This came home to me recently when my then seven-year-old grandson taught my husband how to use his iPad.

Children as Markers of Time

I have always used the age of my children as markers for particular times – we moved house when my daughter was seven, my good friend died when my son was 10. These were easier ways of remembering dates than the actual year, as the years tend to merge into one another with surprising ease.

In contrast, I find it hard to use my grandchildren’s ages as markers of time as they move so fast from one age to another.

Other People’s Surprise

And your friends are constantly surprised about ages. “Is your son really 42 – it feels like only yesterday that we took him to university!” “Is that baby grand-daughter six years old already?” Different friends are taken aback by different information, but what they have in common is surprise at the passage of time. I tend to say, “Yes, they age, but we don’t. We just stay the same.”

And this is, perhaps, hardest of all – realising that we are aging, too. I still remember my own father saying he didn’t mind so much getting old, but he hated having middle-aged children. He always said I was 31, whatever age I actually was. I really understand now how he felt.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do your grandchildren seem to grow before your very eyes? Do you use your children’s ages to remember events? How has your perception of time changed over the years? Please add your thoughts in the comments below.