People Don’t Warn You That These 5 Things You Took For Granted In Your 50s And 60s Will Eventually Fade
Jacob Lund | Shutterstock Yes, my 70th year is going well, mostly because I continue to learn and try new things. But I still experience some serious losses. Below is a short list of losses that do not hurt just as much as those above, and are easier to accept and manage, especially with a good bit of humor, because nobody really prepares you that these things you took for granted in your 50s and 60s will eventually fade.
People don’t warn you that these 5 things you took for granted in your 50s and 60s will eventually fade:
1. Having a trim waistline
The battle against the ever-expanding middle is real, and it’s brutal. Why, oh why, is it so easy to gain weight and so difficult to shed it? As the years pile up, this gets worse and worse.
After walking nearly every day for 40 years, I have included yoga, mindful movement, aqua cardio, and a bit of strength training to my routine. I was looking forward to handling prediabetes, as well as getting fitter, stronger, and thinner.
Yes, a recent hiking trip showed me to be fitter and stronger than ever before. I have also managed to at least stay in the prediabetes paradigm, instead of developing Type 2 diabetes. But thinner? Alas, no! I am now fitter, stronger, and quite a few unwelcome pounds heavier.
2. Staying reasonably fit without really working at it
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Looking reasonably good with minimum effort is a thing of the past. Nowadays, basic body maintenance takes more and more effort, and the results are not always satisfying. Actually, the results are never completely satisfying. Because look, you’re aging.
It simply takes so much longer to look decent. Everything is more work. More scrubbing, hydrating, and exfoliating. And wishing hair would grow where it is supposed to grow.
More hair on the face, fewer on the head. Heels become coarse the moment you dare to walk barefoot, even for a little while. Need I say more? Gravity takes its toll. Everything that can sag does so with enthusiasm. Correct underwear and carefully chosen outfits are important.
The problem is that I don’t like “correct” underwear and “carefully chosen outfits.” I like the undies that have served me for decades. I love my old jeans and saggy sweaters.
3. Waking up without something hurting
Health issues are stealthily creeping in. A pain here, an ache there. A longer recovery time after an injury. Of course, I am thankful that nothing terrible has happened to me. (I don’t even want to name the serious stuff I’m really scared of, but I’m sure you know them, too.) My aches and pains are more of the chronic type. I’m not going to die from them, but they can make life quite unpleasant — if you let them, that is.
But still, everything is steadily declining. Normal bodily functions cannot be taken for granted anymore. The abnormal ones are enthusiastically vying for a permanent place in my life. And of course, you only appreciate something when you don’t have it anymore.
4. Imagining a limitless future
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I did not even have dreams related to writing. Where I grew up, dreams were not encouraged. I did not learn to strive for better things. I learned to accept the life that was dealt to me. Not that it was a terrible life. It was a good life, in a small, unassuming way.
I wrote good compositions in high school. When I was 14, I wrote a long lyrical poem about the charms of the French rugby team visiting South Africa. (That was before total isolation because of Apartheid.) I was the top student in both Afrikaans and English. I loved words in all their wonderful forms.
Nobody encouraged me. (Nobody deliberately dragged me down, either. For that I am grateful.) Years later, I acquired the first electronic typewriter to do typing for students. It had a small memory and a minute screen. (Yes, there was a time when people paid somebody to type their stuff.)
For some reason, I sat down, wrote a short story, and sent it (by snail mail!) to a magazine that I liked. And lo and behold, they accepted it. I only learned how unusual it is to have your first story accepted much later.
About 10 or 12 stories were accepted, and then life got in the way. In the form of two lovely little boys, and then in the form of a short career in teaching. At 48, I returned to writing. Again, my short stories were easily accepted. My first romance novel (in Afrikaans) was published when I was 51. My first romantic novel (a larger, more realistic, more complicated work) was published when I was 54.
It is now 20 years and 50 books later. And I am stuck. Maybe burnt out. Maybe just bored. I need a new dream. Time will tell.
5. Feeling like nothing was off-limits
I did not learn to dance well because I was too shy to dance with boys shorter than me. I did not learn to ride well because I fell off a horse when I was in my 40s — and everybody asked what I was doing on a horse at that ripe old age.
I did not learn to swim well because I grew up in a dry rural area in South Africa, where we splashed and played in a reservoir with frogs around us and silt between our toes. These excuses now sound really pathetic to me. Back then, my body was capable of anything, everything! Now it's more limited.
To scale down the level of pathetic, I joined a mindful dancing class, and I joined aqua exercises, and I’m loving it. I haven’t done anything about the horse riding because I’m afraid of climbing onto a wild horse (figuratively speaking) and getting thrown off. Maybe I should look for a tame horse. Figuratively, or maybe even literally.
Marilé Cloete is a published writer of romantic fiction in her native language, Afrikaans, trying her wings in the vast English world. She mainly writes about the privilege of growing older, mental health, and personal growth.
