One of our local morning shows ran a segment providing tips for a fulfilling retirement. The life coach being interviewed gave the advice touted in hundreds of magazine articles and books; much of it centering around the familiar stopping to smell the roses and finding new purpose sort of themes. Having just spent a couple of days with my grandson, Caleb, it struck me that quite possibly the best role models for making the most of our senior years are young children.
Here are four lessons I learned this week from my six-year-old retirement mentor:
1. Be selfish.
The kids are grown, the career demands are behind us, and the retirement gurus all say, it’s our time. The problem is, for the last thirty or forty years the idea of prioritizing what we want has been a foreign concept; it just feels wrong.
So who better to learn from than a child; they’re born selfish. A newborn could care less that you haven’t slept in days; when they’re hungry at 3:00 a.m. they cry relentlessly until they get what they want. We then spend the next eighteen years introducing concepts like empathy and sharing, and often without intention, we teach them to put the needs of others first. We do it all so they will become compassionate, caring adults capable of making a positive mark on the world. Nothing at all wrong with that except for many of us, especially women, we’ve put our own needs on the backburner for so long we forget we have them.
The first thing my grandson does when he arrives is make a list of everything he wants to do while he’s visiting. And you guessed it; there’s no consideration for anything anyone else might want or need to do. It’s all about making our limited time special . . . for him.
2. Be mindful of the world around us.
How many times have you arrived at a familiar destination and not remembered anything from the drive? That’s not going to happen with a six-year-old in the back seat. They notice everything. And they have endless questions about it all; sometimes you can’t even get one answer out before they’re bombarding you with the next one. A child’s inquisitiveness and curiosity about the world is so genuine and I find in answering Caleb’s questions I remember things I hadn’t thought of in years. Their minds are sponges, soaking in every drop of knowledge we offer up.
Sure, we expect kids to be inquisitive because after all they have a lot to learn. But us older folks are no different since it’s lifelong learning that keeps our minds sharp and helps us adapt to changing circumstances. Too many mindless moments can make us complacent, soften our brains. Staying present and paying attention to the world around us promotes critical thinking and keeps us relevant. When we stop learning, we stop growing and our circle gets smaller. What a pity it would be if the wonders of nature or the evolving situations of the people in our lives were lost to us just because we didn’t stay tuned in.
3. Try new things.
No matter how old we are, we haven’t done it all. Children’s lives are filled with firsts: the first time they hit a baseball, the first time they ride a bike without training wheels, the first time they write their name. Doing new things excites them; they revel in firsts. My grandson woke up Monday morning announcing this was the day he was going to tackle the monkey bars at the local park.
Sometimes as adults we’re trapped in our comfort zone. Maybe it’s the fear of failure or looking silly, or perhaps we just lose our adventurous spirit. As I stood off to the side videoing for mom and dad, I watched his excitement build as he swung his way across those monkey bars. But the thrill of achievement isn’t the only reason to try new things; let’s face it we may not always succeed, especially at first. It’s more about opening the door to new adventures, skills and relationships because there’s the chance in that pursuit we just might find something we love; something that fills a void we may not have even known we had.
4. Make play a priority.
Play is something you do for the fun of it; it enlivens us, making us happy and more optimistic. Probably like many of you, my intention is to die young at the oldest possible age. And to do that my friends, I think we need to get back to playing more.
Monday morning I was busy multi-tasking my way through my to-do list: making breakfast, putting a load of towels in the washer, feeding the dog, marinating the pork tenderloin we’re having for dinner, etc. As was my routine every day, getting the house squared away was my first order of business. Caleb was working on a Lego spaceship at the kitchen table and eyeing me as I ran around checking tasks off my list. Finally, when he’d had enough, he said, “GMa, you sure know how to waste time. We could have been outside playing basketball an hour ago.”
That’s the way a kid thinks. Play is the priority; the other stuff is what you do when you’re finished playing. This hit home because prioritizing what I want to do over what I must do has always been a challenge for me.
Thanks to Caleb’s fine example, I’m course correcting as we speak. This morning I’m sitting at my kitchen table watching a glorious sun rise, savoring my first cup of coffee, and drafting this blog post. Blogging as you know is something new for me, and I’m learning more about it every day. And since it’s also fast becoming a favorite playtime activity, the laundry and dusting are just going to have to wait.
