What are the pleasures of old age?

 Elton John once said: “If you let things happen, that's a magical life.”

I think for myself, my siblings, my family, and friends we have had a magical life. Now I cannot speak for sure about my siblings and friends but I believe that they have had magical lives. Some of my friends were planners and made plans, stuck to them, and achieved their goals. I never did. For the most part, I let life happen and just followed my nose from one day to the next, one month and one year to the next. When the universe presented me with a great project or an idea, and I took it on, I did then plan and focus on the goals I needed to complete the project or bring the idea alive. When it was done, I never knew what was around the corner, but I was always ready to embrace it if it was fun and challenging. What about you?

I know I am lucky because as I age, I do not have too many serious diseases, I have a retirement income which I saved for but I know people who do not. I also know people that have serious diseases and they are reduced to a daily life that is made up of the essentials: rest, meals, medications with the remaining time devoted to one's individual kinds of pleasures of old age. I was captured by the phrase the individual pleasures of old age. What are they for others?

For me it is meeting with my friends, talking to my brother on the phone, helping my wife when I can, spending all the time I want online writing. Enjoying a homemade cookie or dessert. Going to bed and waking up without an alarm clock.

What are your pleasures of old age?

We have many gifts.

As we wander through life, we sometimes forget that we have many gifts, extraordinary gifts. Gifts of perception, insight, and creativity. Gifts of preferences, leanings, and inclinations. All these gifts are wonderful and help shape our world view and our sense of self and our sense of worth.

But there is one, ah yes, just one, that while often overlooked is the most sublime and profound of all, availing you of wonders beyond wonder, and the power to wonder some more. 

It is, of course, the ability to think. To choose a focus. To see the world however you like... and to experience it accordingly. The key is that our gift of thought allows us to shape our world, and this is the greatest gift of all. Sometimes we need to remember that we have the ability to think and we should use that ability.