You know you don’t have to be a deep thinker to realise that as you get older there is an increasing amount of rubbish that will, if you let it, not only clutter up but come to totally dominate one’s existence. Ergo (I like that word) you have to concentrate very hard to notice the good bits.
Just one example and it comes from an unlikely source, namely Facebook. I have been fairly negative about this bit of social media recently, saying, in one of these blogs, what a load of crap there is on this platform (it’s the only one I use so others are probably as bad, even worse) and I’m still waiting to find out if they are going to ban me. So yes all a bit of a surprise when I was scooting past all the rubbish (abandoned stations and Forest Old Boys excepted) to find myself actually reading the next paragraph and even writing it down verbatim in my diary. See what you think.
I see people my age out there climbing mountains and zip lining. And here I am feeling good about myself because I got my leg through my underwear without losing my balance.
Sometimes when it’s right it’s right and this summed up my retirement life perfectly at least as it stands (or falls) at the moment. Balance is probably my single biggest health issue at the moment. So, yes, the quote, to which there was no reference or author that I could see so excuse me quoting it unattributed, just rang a bell, struck a chord, whatever.
It’s not that it’s absolutely the only ‘article’ of note on my Facebook pages, so why this particular one caught my eye I’m not sure. Perhaps it epitomises my approach to a successful retirement / old age, i.e. better maintain a sense of humour if you’re going to benefit from a long (or short) third age (as it is sometimes optimistically described). For without humour we are surely doomed.
And, in addition, without an on-going capacity to spot the diamonds in the rough we are similarly, as the poet said, stuffed. Of course this variation on positive thinking has been around a long time for myself and the world as a whole. Way back when, as an educational psychologist, I spent many a happy hour trying to persuade my clients (parents, teachers, the child themselves) to look for and value the positive. Sounds simple enough but …
And here we still are or rather I still am, needing to remind myself of the need to find the positive in my retirement life. Not so easy as it was with health problems dragging me down a bit. The line above about balance and underpants is obviously meant to be funny but maybe not so much when you get to my age (76). And don’t even get me started on the frustration, not just about falling over, but of then getting back up again. As I say, don’t get me started.
So maybe the morale of this particular blog is that Facebook has some good things on it (now they’ll surely ban me) providing you can zoom unfettered past the crap, particularly the clickbait crap, and still have your wits about you to notice the useful stuff. My idea of useful, as above, may not be your idea of useful but that’s OK, just make sure you retain the capacity to notice whatever your version of the good stuff is. I’ll stop now before I become too preachy.
Strangely one example of my good stuff is retaining the capacity to write this blog approximately every two weeks. Being number one on Google is a bonus but not by any means, a necessity, so in the meantime you all out there, fight for the positive. Too preachy? You’re probably right.