There are lots of things we all used to do.
A whole lifetime of them.
No matter your age, you are definitely older than you used to be. The consequences are that you may not be able to do everything you used to love to do.
Your body, your mind or just good common sense tells you it’s time to stop.
That’s a problem when it is something that you have defined yourself by. You feel like you have lost a piece of yourself.
That’s painful in a way that only you can feel. Someone else may not care about that thing you lost. But you certainly do.
It’s hard not to get down and complain, “I can’t do that anymore.” We all can understand being negative when you feel your identity is slipping away.
A way to help yourself through this is to find something else you are doing and say, “I can still do this.”
That’s positive.
It doesn’t mean you’re happy about the whole thing. Might as well latch onto the reality of the situation and make the best of it.
Are you living in a different place these days?
If you are, then there may be many things you used to do where you used to live that you can’t do now that you’re gone.
But even if it’s better where you are now, you sure could miss the old place and have good memories from your time there. Probably brought up your kids there. That’s a big deal.
We never really leave the place where we spent most of our lives. It stays in who you were then and continues into who you are now.
Are you retired?
If that is a yes, then those things you did day after day at work with a whole population of people constitute a large number of things you used to do.
Those things you did in your profession could be among the things you miss the most.
Or, if you weren’t thrilled with where you worked and with whom you worked, they could be the things you miss the least.
If you had to commute to work, you probably don’t miss that commute at all. Maybe it was a miserable drive with traffic and lunatic drivers making you crazy every day. Twice a day.
But if you were on a train, you may miss the “train buddies” you commuted with. That’s a whole separate society of people we are thrown together with who become a part of our lives five days a week.
Overall, the gist of this issue is simple.
We have to accept the limitations that staying on this planet throws at us. As everyone knows, the alternative is not being here and that sucks worse.
But don’t forget that there are also opportunities that come along with this.
By staying here this long you may be a grandparent now. There is nothing better than that. I wouldn’t trade being Grandpaw for still being on the basketball court every week. And I still play tennis (that’s my “I can still do this”).
What we’re seeing here is that not doing what we used to do can be a good thing or a bad thing. Or maybe a don’t care.
No matter what, the bottom line is we can control some things in our lives, and other things not so much.
So what else is new?
You can get depressed about the bad (like crotchety old people) or celebrate the good and deal with the bad as best you can.
Yeah, it was better when you could do whatever you loved to do without limitations.
But that was then, and this is now.
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Marc Axelrod retired from the ABC Television Network after 37 years, starting as a Technical Writer and then filling various Training and Development roles in the Broadcast division. His writing has ranged from the technical all the way to Hollywood screenplays. He is currently a Professional Writing Consultant to the the US Army War College and a Professional Writing Tutor at Molloy University in Rockville Centre, NY. His favorite role by far is being Grandpaw to two amazing little grandchildren.
To read more of his thoughts on grandparenting, Marc encourages you to visit his website The Grandpaw Chronicles at: https://www.thegrandpawchronicles.com
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