From a conversation with my husband:
— Do you think a woman at 52 can find another man?
Are you talking about yourself?
— Well, let’s say…
«Not just you…»
— Why???
«I’ll kill him right away…»
“… the reefs of the fiftieth anniversary, where men so often crash, Fandorin passed at full sail, with a developing standard … ..
Having celebrated his birthday with a walk in a spacesuit on the seabed, he sat on the veranda in the evening, looked at the flanking audience, sipped pink punch, mentally repeating “I’m fifty, I’m fifty” — as if trying to taste an unusual drink. Suddenly, my eyes fell on a decrepit old man in a white panama: a dried-up, shaking mummy was being rolled by a mulatto servant in a wheelchair.
“I hope I will not live to such an age,” thought Fandorin, and suddenly realized that he was frightened. And he was even more frightened that the thought of old age frightened him. The mood was spoiled. He went to his room to sort through the jade rosary and draw on paper the hieroglyph “old age”….”
I confess that sometimes I scare myself as much as Fandorin, or rather as the brilliant Boris Akunin, who wrote novels about Fandorin. I scare myself with old age, infirmity … Why? Here’s the question? And then I begin to watch how other people live in the second half of their lives in order to learn from them how cool it is to live, feel and do interesting things at this time.
Creative people in the second half of life obviously win the fight with age and old age. Artists, poets, writers and psychotherapists — for them there is no age in the profession, and vice versa, age only gives strength and wisdom.
But Fandorin in the novel surpassed for me all my acquaintances living at the age of 50 and beyond! I quote further again the novel by B. Akunin “The whole world is a theater”:
“Erast Petrovich did not intend to give up physical and mental strength. For this purpose, he developed a special program.
In each next year of life, you need to master a new u.e.zh. Even two u.e.zha: sports-physical and intellectual. Then aging will not be scary, but interesting.
Quite quickly, a long-term plan for the coming expansion was drawn up — and such that the next fifty years might not be enough.
From the tasks of the intellectual direction that have not yet been implemented, Fandorin intended: to finally learn the German language, master Chinese, thoroughly get acquainted with Muslim culture, for which it will be necessary to learn Arabic and study the Koran in the original … — and so on, and so on.
From the tasks of sports, the nearest period: to learn how to fly an airplane, devote a year to the Olympic entertainment that is curious and useful for coordinating movements — pole vaulting, go in for mountaineering, by all means master diving without a suit … Oh, you can’t list everything!
The ingenious idea expressed in this novel is to set for yourself new tasks of the physical plan, intellectual every year, and on my own I would add — it would be nice to set creative tasks for yourself!
Well, for example, what will I set for myself next year, what tasks? So I came up with, like Fandorin, the following:
I’ve wanted to try tightrope walking for a long time. There are such special ropes now, anyone can buy them, tie them in the park between the trees and practice. I have a friend, a graduate of the circus school, she has such a rope. I’ll try!
— I also want to go to speed reading and memory courses, the brilliant academician Oleg Andreev, there is his center on Tsvetnoy Boulevard. Many members of the government are engaged in his method!
I want to learn a new program for processing and creating video films.
— and the last, creative, I will try to master painting in the Japanese style.
Especially here, in this plan, there is nothing about the main activity, there are already enough different plans!
And yet, Fandorin is a fictional hero of a good novel, and if you look at real people, for me in many ways an example is my mother!
At 75, she works, teaches, recently mastered the Internet, learned this year to print letters from a mailbox on the Internet, although it was obviously very difficult for her! She also surprises me by the fact that her interests do not fade away and she:
— goes to theaters for premieres,
— reads new literature, is interested in what books are coming out, (mostly she reads memoirs),
— watches almost all new films in the nearest cinema,
— learned to search for the right films on the Internet and watch — this is just a breakthrough for her!
— draws pictures, embroiders and walks in the forest for hours.
Another quote from Fandorin:
“50 years is the age when it is time to draw conclusions, but you can still change plans.”
On my birthday, when I turned 50, my mother sent me the following text message: “… congratulations… 50 years is the age when many stupid things are over and you can do something really interesting…”
What is important in the second half of life?
A year ago, I thought it was important:
— to be realized: see if everything that you wanted is realized in this life (love, work, career, business, creativity). If not everything is realized, then you can still have time to realize something new in your life, to which the soul aspires …
— physical condition, health.
— in the second half of life, it is important to start giving something, and not just receiving, to realize who you are, what your mission is and what you can give: knowledge, experience, etc…
— social environment, friends and new friends … the circle of friends is thinning, and new ones are not so easy to find …
But just doing your job well and living an ordinary life is not enough for the “organism” system to strive for life.
If you remember, Freud also had this idea:
For the life of the system, it is not enough just to stabilize at a good level. Any living system either develops or begins to strive for death.
A living biological system, a person and an organization strives for life if the system creates, creates new ideas and brings them to life.
It is important to follow your true desires and aspirations, for what brings joy, passion, then time even stops, as it happens, for example, when an artist paints a picture, a director makes a film, etc.
There is another extreme — if there are too many ideas and actions, then there is an overstrain of the body from the amount of work and tension of the psyche .. This is definitely not necessary!
In 2013, I was surprised and shocked to see Jean Marie Robin (famous French psychotherapist) just starting to learn how to play the drum set and trying to arrange some of the tunes. And now he is about the age of my mother .. Starting a new creative business at that age means striving for life!
I wish you to make interesting plans for each year, such plans that they inspire you, and then successfully implement these plans, get joy, drive from life and give joy to others.