Rethinking our next chapter

 

The thought its finally hitting home that I am entering a new phase of life.  Next year I’ll be sixty-five and will officially enter old age.  Lucky for me, I live in the Twenty First century and not the Twelve century when my lifespan would have been over at least fourteen years ago.  This extra time has been good for my psychic and for our finances since that would have been 2007 when so many things happened to us that we are thankful to have survived and could I say, thrived in the ensuing years.  So what happens next? And do we have a say on how the remaining years unfold? 

 

Physical health is probably high on the list of important things to have at this stage.  It’s not guaranteed nor is it automatic.  Part is the debt you have from your lifestyle of the last 60 years, another part on your genes and probably a good part is your luck or lack thereof.  A mixture of those three factors and you end up with a life expectancy and most importantly a certain quality of life to carry you for your remaining years. 

 

Then there is your financial health which could also be a factor of three similar factors: how well you managed your finances in the last 40 years, how much you may have received from others, including your company or the government, and how lucky have you been in your investments or risks you may have taken with your finances.  Mixing those up you end up comfortable in your retirement or bagging groceries, not for fun, but to make ends meet.

 

In essence, it seems that, not putting too much weight on the “luck factor”, how you have carried your life during your productive years has a lot to do with how you’d spend the last phase of your life.

 

If you’re fortunate enough to have those two factors on your side, you get to decide what to do the rest of your life.  If one or both of those factors are spoken for, then your choices will be limited, at least part of the time.

One of the big decisions for that next phase of life is where to do the whole thing.  If you planned it right, and you enjoy where you are, you can just stay in place for the duration, but if you have a multi-story house or a house that is too big or you are far from family and friends or even if you need to go to a cheaper area where your funds would go a longer way, then you have that other question to ponder at.

Another decision is how you will use the bulk of you time.  You may be able to sit to watch Netflix all day long, but you could also introduce new activities to your life.  Things that you always thought you’d enjoy but didn’t have the time or hobbies that you have always entertained but could not do them full time before. 

A Year Later, Still Dealing with the Virus

The world, especially the USA, had the beast under the net, but somehow we allowed it to get free. A year and a half after the beginning of the pandemic, we are now officially living with the virus.

I don’t know if we as a country were always this way or whether Trump just released all our demons, but the government is now more polarized than ever.  Maybe the whole thing started with the election of former President Obama.  Many in the country saw that as a slap in the face.  Even Mitch McConnel, the majority leader of the US Senate, vowed to block everything President Obama proposed to make him a “one-term president.”  He did get elected twice, but the country took a giant political swing. We ended up with the polar opposite, Donald Trump.  The arrival of social media unleashed the ability of everyone to express their opinion and often under the disguise of a pseudonym.  Emotions reached a culmination on  January six of this year when many Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.  They were looking for anyone in power. They were mainly looking for VP Pence as he was affirming the results of the November 2020 election.  A sad period in our history and a reminder that we are just like the rest of the world and not an inch above anyone else.

Another casualty of the times has been the disregard for science and knowledge.  Trump airing the concept of “alternate truths” instigated the idea that whatever you want to believe in, it is okay because that’s what you believe.  No need for data or knowing how to interpret data.  Anyone’s ideas are just as good as gospel, and as long as you can verbalize them, that makes them sound.  Being a scientist since my earlier days, this lack of regard for knowledge and the process of acquiring this knowledge makes me sick and intolerant when I hear folks promoting ill-acquired information and when some put more weight on superstition and their beliefs than what comes out of the peer-reviewed medical journals and spokespersons.

I am moving on.  I also have my views and ways of looking at the world.  I believe in science and am happy to trust fellow scientists when they bring their ideas forth.  I don’t expect the ultimate truth.  In science, we know that scientific discoveries are only good as long as they reflect the latest understanding of the scientific community.  Two months or two decades later, that same concept is passed and replaced with the newest information from competing scientific teams.  That’s the nature of learning.  That’s the way science grows in understanding and knowledge.  I don’t get upset that one day someone says the virus is transmitted by touching contaminated surfaces. The next minute someone finds that only two percent of the infections are because of touching contaminated surfaces.  The first was a good guess of how it could happen; the second comes about after reviewing the data and further investigation.  It’s okay; the truth is not written in stone to never be erased; the truth is only as good as the data that supports it. 

We have learned a whole lot about this virus.  We now can go about our lives, thanks to vaccines and thanks to the experience we just went through.  It would make sense.  But not to everyone.  A large segment of our society questions everything that does not agree with what they have built as their truth.  I don’t know where this is going to take us, but I am terrified