Sixty is the new ten! What?! Yes, I do mean as in 10-years old. Bear with me and take a trip down memory lane to the 1960’s and 70’s.

Where the idea began

Getting ready for the day today, I had on Disc 2 of Neil Diamond’s 50^th Anniversary Collection. When “Play Me” began, I traveled back to the early 1970’s. I was in my parents’ den, in my father’s recliner, with his headphones on, hooked up to his stereo set listening to my favorite artists. That would be either Neil Diamond or Barbra Streisand.

I grew up loving the melodies, harmonies and words of ballads. As a preteen and teenager they carried me away to a world of my own creation. By the time I was ten I had the habit of imagining what kind of teenager I might be someday. Sometimes I wondered about life as an adult – way off in the future – but mostly I was curious about my future as an American teen.

Teens are groovy

In my life most of my favorite people were teenagers – from babysitters to those my mom taught in Sunday school to the older siblings of my friends. My young life was full of “The Pepsi Generation” and I wanted to be just like them!

I wanted to be so much like them that when I was nine my best friend and I convinced our mothers to get us Gogo boots for Christmas, which they did! They were really cheap plastic white Gogo boots. The left one of mine got torn early on. I never said a word. I kept wearing mine anyway because looking and feeling like the teens in my life was everything to me!

Eventually Mom noticed, that was the end of the Gogo boots but for a brief shining moment I was cooler than cool!

45 RPM, 33 1/3 RPM

One of my favorite forms of play, as an introspective child, was listening to music and day dreaming. I’d done it for as long as I could remember. By the time I was five I’d been given my dad’s record player that played singles and had inherited his 45 RPM record collection. I could sit on my bedroom floor for hours listening to the music. I learned the tunes and words to songs from the 1940’s and 1950’s. It makes sense, then, that on the verge of the magical teen years, my musical tastes leaned in the direction of Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand even more than the considerably cooler James Taylor or Carol King.

So now I’m ten. Daddy has taught me how to use his stereo equipment and I’m free to put on the head phones and disappear in reverie. Or I can play the music over the speakers in the living room where I sit in a rattan swinging chair, gaze out the window into middle space, and live in the daydreams in my head. That world, inside my head is full of creative ideas and plans, hope and yearning.

That was then

At the same time that I’m enamored with teenagers and look forward to becoming one, I am actually becoming one. With early menses, by the time I’m twelve I’m sexually awakening. I have strong opinions about how I want to dress, how much I hate my naturally curly, frizzy hair, spending hours figuring out how to tame that mess, and my day dreams veer closer and closer to wondering what it might be like to be a full grown adult one day. I “borrow” my mother’s Cosmopolitan magazines on a regular basis. (To be clear, by “borrow” I mean she doesn’t know I read them.) They are certainly educational.

Observations of the lives of others, magazines and television inform my daydreams. And so when as a preteen I listen to Neil’s albums, I am the beautiful, popular, accomplished young adult that I create in my imagination.

I will never, ever become her in real life. As an adult I will finally have grown my hair out long in an era that is very kind to naturally curly hair. This accomplishment will bring such joy to my inner preteen. Scholastic and work achievements will never stack up to what it means to her that, at least as an adult, “she” finally got long hair.

This is now

So what does the messiness of the preteen years have to do with being 60 and why in the world would I say 60 is the new 10?

Because when I transported back in time to Neil’s music this morning; I felt hope and yearning for the decades in front of me. At 60 that was new. I felt like I was ten again with the glorious potential of the future within my grasp.

I’ve been looking at the years behind me with intense interest for a long time. When I’ve looked at the future I’ve had apprehension. During the past fifteen years I’ve collected the losses in my life and held on to them tightly.  These losses have been that of family and friends who have died, the loss of my own good health and vitality, and the loss that comes with the discovery that I have become irrelevant, even invisible, to certain age groups. This focus has often dampened my enthusiasm for the future…until this morning.

I always transport back in time whenever I listen to Neil Diamond or Barbra Streisand. It’s yummy to travel like that! But this morning was different. In that moment, I felt oomph – the energy of hope and yearning.  The hope and yearning point to the time I have left to be creative in every single aspect of my life.

Perspective

Years ago women’s magazines began shouting, “30 is the new 20! 40 is the new 30! 50 is the new 40!” And then it got worse. I was seeing, “40 is the new 20! 50 is the new 30!”  

I scoffed, “You’re full of it. That is so stupid.” Nowhere inside my body did I feel anything approaching a decade younger and now they’d added another decade!

In the interim, though, I’ve been working on what ails me. I’ve made use of allopathic medicine, alternative medicine and psychotherapy. As a result, currently my aches and pains don’t get me down. I’ve made inroads in easing my discomfort (physical, mental and emotional). I believe the work I’ve done is why this morning I felt that oomph when the opening notes of “Play Me” began.

Currently I’m not preoccupied with the physical pain of the past or the anticipation of pain in the future. I’m at peace with the pain I currently manage. And I am psyched to embrace a number of creative outlets; which, even at 60, include how I wear my hair and how I dress.

It’s like being 10 again where the present and future are mine to create. Back then I was old enough to have increasing agency. I needed less and less adult supervision. I had growing opportunities to make my own decisions and began to comprehend that, for the most part, I could determine how each day turned out.

These days I have increasing agency over how I perceive the losses and pain in my life. I have the opportunity to embrace the creative outlets available to me. I have energy and imagination available for creative pursuits. And for the most part, I get to determine how each day turns out for me. It’s delightful!

I turned 60 in August. Today I am grateful to have been gifted with this oomph, this hope and yearning, playfully calling it “60 is the new 10,” as we greet the new calendar year 2021.  

May your New Year and mine be filled with self-awareness openings, allowing goodness and blessings in, and with oodles of scrumptious creativity at our fingertips! We need and deserve these things. Our planet needs and deserves these things.

Happy New Year!