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Project B70
Issue 1: September 6, 2015
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Quick Links
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(updated monthly)
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Good Sunday morning!
What happened to Reflections? In case you missed the last couple of issues, we are in transition. Beginning this week, Reflections will appear every other week, alternating with a new series called Project B70. B70 will focus on the experience of aging. Reflections will continue to generate perspectives on everyday challenge and change.
Each series has its own mailing list, so after this week you will get B70 emails only if you have asked to receive them (reply to this email if you wish to and have not yet done so). If you want to remain on the Reflections mailing list, you needn't do anything.
Go well!
Pam
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| Project B70: Vision |
Welcome to Project B70 (big seven-oh), an adventure we are sharing as I ramp up to my 70th birthday next August. I want this adventure to be playful. I don't want to take it (or myself) too seriously. "The point" (if there is a point) is to stir things up a bit, get out of the comfort zone, challenge assumptions, and jiggle complacency. I want to push the limits I have inadvertently drawn for myself as years pass.
As a life coach, I begin every journey with a vision. Where do I want to go? This time, I want to go somewhere new. Maybe it's even a place I haven't heard of or imagined before. How to describe something like that? In the coming year, I want to collect a mosaic of experiences that open my eyes, open my mind, and open my heart. I want to have new knowledge, new skills, and new insights.
I want to hold life in a lighter grasp. I want to trust more and control (or try unsuccessfully to control) less. I want to listen alertly for the soft inner voice that knows exactly what I need most: to see, to do, to be.
I want to challenge my relationship with fear. Yes, it is sometimes appropriate to pull back. Sometimes the danger is real. So many times, however, caution is excessive and the reflexive urge to fight or flee is unnecessary. I want to discern the difference and move forward when the light is yellow (but not yet red).
I want to make peace with discomfort: physical, mental, and emotional. I want to accept, assess, address, and in many cases live with the inevitable changes of aging. Yes there are more aches and pains when I work out. I seem to break more easily. More and more doctors on my contact list, more pills in the little plastic box. I get hungry more often than needed to maintain my weight. I feel awkward with new learning, stumbling to master unfamiliar content and technology. I am anxious in social settings, tempted to hang out with familiar friends instead of making new ones. Discomfort looms around every bend. I want to live the serenity prayer: changing what I can, accepting what I cannot, and knowing the difference.
A year from now, I will be 70 years old. I don't want to deny that I am aging or pretend that nothing has changed. Nor do I want to give up prematurely on the adventure of living fully. I want to expand, not contract my horizons with the years.
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| Field Notes |
A few weeks ago, I brainstormed a "bucket list" of things I might do to prepare for a new decade. One item on the list was "take a music appreciation class." University registration was underway, so I quickly checked the online catalog.There was indeed such a class. I contacted the professor, claimed the over-65 tuition waiver, chose "credit" over "audit," studied the bus schedule to evade on-campus parking fees, and reported for class. I am excited. The list of comfort-zone-expanding incidents associated with this effort is already long. Self-discovery is in progress. In my head, I am 18 years old again, indulging the energy of a fresh start and nurturing anxiety over what I don't yet know. Then I look in the mirror, and I don't blend in with other reflections on either side. That's OK, I'm on my way!
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| Community |
I want to use this forum to share glimpses from the lives of others who hover around or beyond 70-something. Some will come from news media, others from my own buddies. It is so easy, once you look, for pearls of wisdom and examples of aging well. I don't have to look far. Run Wild Missoula, our local running club, remains competitive in the senior age groups. Bob, 87, runs more races at every distance than anyone else in town. Many of us have yet to beat him (and we try). Ethel, 77, spends several weeks at at time, several times a year, bike touring on her own, Whether in the US or in Europe, she bikes from town to town, staying with strangers she meets online through, "warmshowers.com." And these are just a few among many examples of local over-seventies in action.
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Pam Gardiner
Wellbuddies Coaching
wellbuddies@gmail.com
406-274-0188
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