Member-only story
I’m 72 years old and happier than ever!
I’ve come to realize something that I never thought about until recently: the future is a burden that weighs us down! The younger we are, the greater the burden.
Think about it.
As I look back, I see that I had many decisions that made my life burdensome:
Where should I go to school? What should I study? Should I move to San Francisco? Should I buy this house? Should I stay with this job? Do I stay with Social Security or invest independently? Which pension plan should I choose? Should I date this guy? Do we give this relationship a chance? Do we break up or seek counseling in order to make it work?
You get the idea.
Now, at 72, these crucial decisions are not only far behind me, but I am reaping their benefits. Sure, there are still decisions to be made, but all of them are significantly less stressful:
What should we have for lunch? Should I make the plain hummus or the sun-dried tomato variety? How many weeks should we spend in Italy this spring? Should we stay for three or four nights in Portland?
It helps that I am totally comfortable with my mortality. Sure, I would love to live into my nineties or longer. It’s possible that I have twenty or thirty more years to live. Or I may have only two more years. I could drop…
