I was recently back in New York City, staying with my friend Tory in the west Village apartment building where I lived from 1978 through 1996. Tory and I went to high school together and lived across the hall from each other in our 20s and 30s.
In our early years there, the neighborhood was a bit dicey, peopled with actors, transvestites and tattooed leather types, with cow and pig carcasses hanging from hooks on Washington Street with animal grease dripping on the sidewalks. Now the “historic meat-packing district” (sans the meat of course) is one of the city’s tourist hot spots with The High Line, the new Whitney museum, five-star hotels and chichi restaurants.
Times have changed. We were in our 20s then, starting our adult lives – me as an actor, her as a pre-school teacher. I was newly divorced; she was living with her college boyfriend. During my week in the city we wondered how we got to be in our 60s. Wasn’t it only yesterday that we were 30-something? (Almost the current age of Tory’s daughters whose births I remember).
When you know someone since you were 15, there is something embedded in the relationship that keeps you ageless. But now as we both heartbreakingly deal with our aging parents, our senior-citizenness is rudely apparent.
As we talked about the less than ideal ways to deal with our parents’ end-of-life issues, we wondered if it’s possible to plan an alternative version for ourselves. Tory mused that the 60s are like the 20s. Both are decades where you’re faced with exploring what’s next – what you want to do with the rest of your life.
Tory’s theory is in one’s 20s you decide and start what you do in your 30s, 40s & 50s, until you come to a new crossroads in your 60s. This was certainly the case with my parents who started a whole new life when they turned 60.
My dad retired from the company where he worked for 30 years to do consulting and my mom became a travel agent, working out of the home for the first time since her 20s. They traveled the world for the next 30 years and broadened their horizons. It inspired me to see how young they remained until they turned 90 and started to slow down.
My life has been more unconventional. What I started in my 20s (a life in the city, acting) morphed in my 30s to starting a theatre company, producing plays, closing it down and going to theological seminary. In my 40s I ran a church-based outreach ministry in Johannesburg’s city center during the decade of historic change in South Africa. It was there I first heard about shamans in Peru.
My 50s I can say, was my most exciting decade – moving to Peru, creating Paz y Luz Healing Center and Hotel, publishing 2 books, teaching the Andean spiritual tradition around the world, meeting and marrying my beloved Christer. Even his death taught me about the nature of unconditional love and how relationships continue beyond time and space.
My week in New York was full of reflection and reminiscing. Tory said she and her husband are among the oldest in the building now. When we moved in, we were the youngest. I used to ride my bicycle around the city in the 80s and 90s. They have built a beautiful bike path since then that runs along the Hudson. I rented a Citi Bike and as I rode downtown I thought about how it was then as I marveled how it is now.
There were no cell phones then, or iPods or internet. No Google or Wikipedia. Riding up to midtown to meet my brother for lunch, I noticed that the workforce packed on the sidewalks was mostly in their 30s and 40s. They moved fast like I used to, on their way to somewhere important.
My legs felt like jelly when I got home. Those heavy bikes aren’t made for the over 40 crowd. I realized though, an advantage to being 60+ – I’m not in the same hurry as I once was. I’m happier to be in the present moment, to appreciate what is and was, to slow down and let the future unfold, discovering as I go along, what the rest of my life will be.