I suppose there is some comfort in knowing that it is not normally an October/November thing---falling victim to the newest fad, jumping in headfirst before knowing how deep the water is.
After all, how many of us late-lifers are willing to make a drastic change of course? Not many, I'm guessing. But perhaps we should be a little bolder. How can the thriving and becoming I so often rant about take place if we refuse to leave the same old rut?
I won’t pretend to speak for you---not in light of my own sometimes suspect history. For any of us, climbing out of our comfortable rut to move toward something more or better is apt to be a formidable task---a daunting mental journey from the known to the unknown, or at least the less-well-known.
As sometimes happens in my November storytelling world, an evolving Tanner Chronicles storyline is apt to have me pausing to examine some “taken-for-granted” part of my own late-life routine. Ironically, the story I am presently dealing with is about an October fellow sunk deep in his own personal rut.
The new friend I have imagined into being, I call him Neal, is a semi-disabled, apartment-bound senior who has reluctantly resigned himself to a narrow and limited, television-centered life. His most basic of Basic Cable packages allows him a boring routine of morning game shows, afternoons of dated situation comedy reruns, and evenings spent nodding off in the midst of mind-numbing old movies. For all practical purposes that has become his life.
Of course, scattered throughout those endless hours of uninspired detachment are the quiet moments that overtake all of us from time to time---when bittersweet recollections of times past float to the front of our mind. Remembered bits of childhood, some of them sentimental, some traumatic, may capture our attention. Or the unsettling highs and lows of long-ago school days may hold court. For Neal those reveries will also include endearing, but hurtful memories of special times spent with his recently-departed wife of forty-some years.
After months spent adapting to his new lifestyle he has come to accept the latest, and apparently final stage of his long life as the only future in sight, the best he can expect.
But what he has not foreseen are the insistent efforts of his daughters, who are determined to steer their father toward a more fulfilling future. Most surprising of all, they are setting out to expand his nearly-destitute lifestyle by taking advantage of capabilities he had never considered.
Though he will grumble each step of the way, railing against the possibilities ‘the girls’ are trying to sell him, there will be no denying the impact of their seductive sales pitch. What can they possibly offer that would move him beyond his rut? Let’s see if I can explain?
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Perhaps like you, I grew up in front of a television set, weaned on dramas, comedies, and variety shows that reflected the 1950s and 1960s world I knew. Sadly, in today’s 2017 universe, with its too-violent dramas, phony fantasy, too-graphic relational tales, and unfunny comedies there is little left for someone like me to watch. Beyond my nightly news fix, Rachel Madow, a good ballgame or documentary it too often feels like I have been left behind.
In those long-ago 50s and 60s my peers and I stumbled through our adolescent years with music playing all around us---more than any earlier generation had experienced. The music we heard was new, unlike anything heard before. Moreover, the technology that made it possible was just as new.
Today we all know how that music has remained with us in ways we never imagined. Yet, like everything else in this world of ours, both the music and the technology have continued to change, until all these years later they have become something very different than we remember, something totally foreign to an old fossil like me.
Then, about the time we had resigned ourselves to being left behind, out of step with today’s cultural tastes, we came face to face with the most disruptive change of all---a technological firestorm that rewrote the rules and changed the landscape.
Could you and I have imagined such a thing in our well-remembered glory years? Just think about the timid, perhaps overwhelmed teenager you were back then. Could you have made your way in the intimidating new world of Twitter and tweet, Gmail, and Facebook? Could we have handled today’s internet?
Of course, that was then. This is now. Here we are, a tick or two past our prime---living, if not thriving, in that brave new internet world. If you are at all like me you have set up shop on the fringes of that on-line techno-world, holding on by your finger tips.
For a long time my internet involvement was limited to Gmail, Facebook, my own blog, and the Daily Mail. Those became the elements of my after-breakfast routine, before I moved on the day’s more mundane activities---until, that is, I started looking around for more 'online candy.' The more I looked, the more I found, and the more I realized how much the internet, aka ‘the web,’ has to offer.
In the course of late-life conversations I have met dozens of peers for whom the internet is at best a foreign idea, and at worst a threat they would rather avoid. You probably know folks like that. You might be one of them. It is not my place to say those concerns are wrong. But I do feel an urge to explain, even briefly, what I think they are missing. At least I will try.
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First of all, long story short, my fictional friend Neal will use the internet possibilities his daughters are selling to expand his life. That is the story I want to tell---how so many of us October/November folks could use those tools to broaden our own horizons. More to the point, if you have been told, or have told yourself, that you can’t do that, YOU ARE WRONG. Again, allow me to explain.
They tell us that younger generations no longer rely on newspapers to stay current on the issues of the day. But I’m guessing that many of us October/November types have never outgrown our reliance on a morning newspaper with our breakfast coffee. What many of us don’t know is that If you are a ‘newspaper person’ the internet is definitely for you.
By now nearly every major newspaper in the world has an online, English-language edition. It has never been easier to follow international events, in a format we can read, often presented from a very different perspective than our home-town press. As an avowed Anglophile one of my personal favorites is the site that lists websites for virtually every newspaper in England.
Or maybe you are the social sort---perhaps the kind who fostered pen-pal friendships as a youngster. Rest assured that virtually every country has online senior pen-pal sites, making it easy to meet and visit with international friends---including October types like us. While following a few common sense rules, (Do not disclose personal information, succumb to romantic overtures, or send money.) it is still possible to create satisfying and lasting international friendships.
Or you might be a senior who would rather use the internet for your personal entertainment. It is hard to overstate the range of entertainment and educational videos that await your viewing. There are literally thousands of videos featuring your favorite performers and their music from years gone by, along with classic stand-up routines and the situation comedies you remember from your own glory days.
And finally there is the ultimate retirement staple---late-life travel. In both photographic and video formats the internet offers an incredible selection of travel material to whet your appetite. Most every country is represented--- each with their own enticing photo essays and comprehensive video presentations, documenting the virtues of travel to and within their country.
Whatever your imagined destination, no matter what you hope to see or do, you can be sure that someone has been there, camera in hand, to illustrate the possibilities from every angle. Their efforts have literally taken 'armchair travel' to a whole new level.
And how do you find all those treasures? If you don't know by now, you should certainly learn. It is called 'Google.'
You call it up, type any question you want answered, ("Where can I find old music videos?") and bingo, your screen will be filled with hundreds, if not thousands of answers. That works for any question you can imagine.
So, it is those possibilities, along with many more, which will finally win Neal’s attention---providing a multitude of ways for him to move beyond his numbing retirement experience. And in the end, when the time comes for a break from those online diversions, his ‘most-favorite-of-all’ internet destination ---Sixteen Exciting Solitaire Games---will remain just a click away.
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Finally, as I am prone to do, I will end with one more bit of context for the ‘Neal’ story I am telling. It was only a few months ago when an upsetting cancer diagnosis had me seeking a late-life purpose, a reason to keep going.
I would never claim to speak for the Divine. But it feels as though my meanderings through today’s tangled, but satisfying October/November landscape---trying my best to shine a light, dim as it may be, on late-life opportunities and challenges---is as close as I will find to a valid reason to keep plowing ahead.
Too often we allow ourselves to approach these years with dread, when we ought to be focused on the possibilities and potential. That’s what I would like to do. Hopefully, my friend Neal will lend a hand in that effort.
