Have You Reached the Mountaintop?

Decades travel at the speed of a “don’t blink, you’ll miss it” kind of rush. When we were teens or young adults, we thought we would never, ever see the time when we were called “senior citizens.” But, sure enough, every single one of us arrive blinking our eyes in surprise and wonder! Of course, when we finally do get to our mountaintop, our minds play tricks on us and we still think we are twenty years younger than reality.

For Such a Time

Every season of our lives has its pros and cons. In our college years, life started happening all at once. Joyfully or not, we were separating from our parents and envisioning a lifetime of great success, the “I can’t live without you” type of perfect relationships, and happily doing things our way.

Between our 30s and 40s, life started revealing its true nature. Things were different than we originally imagined, but still manageable. Our energies slowed a bit, and then took off again, as we adjusted our goals to fit our lifestyles. Here we learned the difference between “Me, Me, Me” and “We, We, We.” Life was good as long as we were willing to open our hearts and minds to the world.

What color is your reflection?

Midlife comes onto the scene with a vengeance! For some it’s a shock to look in the mirror and discover a new landscape or an entirely new life. Now we remember all those things we wanted to do thirty years prior before interruptions and distractions took over. We start making plans, realizing time is starting to speed up.

The good news is that we can look around and see new possibilities we never knew we had. Currently, 108.7 million people in the U. S. are over age fifty and growing, 53.5 percent are women, with 40 percent of men and women living as single/single-again. So we are not alone by any means. If we truly want to do something with the next fifty years, we need to be willing to get out of the house and meet others in our “tribe.”

Five Ideas to Begin Now

Thinking about it, our experiences pile one on top of the other for our entire lives. They build for us an entire “library” of knowledgeable events, good and bad. We can not actually go back in history and re-do our lives. But we can go forward, call on our learning episodes and make things new and different. We could start with these ideas:

• Lifelong Learning - always beneficial and fun, pick something you’ve wanted to learn or participate in doing. Local colleges provide a regular schedule of one-time classes.
• Travel Groups - how many of the U. S. states have you seen? How about that foreign country you’ve dreamed of stepping foot on? Day trips are also a great way to see sites and meet others without a big commitment.
• Community Events - right in your own hometown, there are plenty of occasions to use your skills, learn new ones, or volunteer and make your neighborhood better.
• Church Groups - just ask and you’ll see your church can always use your help. You’ll feel useful and needed for sure.
• Dating - please note dating clubs, organizations, and especially online dating, is not recommended by this author. They rarely result in any permanent relationship, are sometimes costly, and can actually be dangerous for the novice. However, if you feel you are ready to begin a new relationship, getting out and joining with others in some of the above groups may lead to meeting someone with similar interests. And that is a very good beginning!

Golden Days

No matter our circumstances and lifestyle at the moment, there is a way to make a difference with our days. God provides what we need, when we need it, if we just ask. He is always ready to help and will never, ever leave us. Just having a determination to do something with our lives that is worthwhile and beneficial is Step Two. Step One is placing our faith in the One true God. We can do that, can’t we?

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7 NIV).