PHILOSOPHY & SELF
Starting Over Later in Life
Look around you on any given day, and you will see people that have to rebuild their lives from scratch through no fault of their own — war, natural disaster, or even being conned out of their money — any one of these things can happen, and more. Starting over in your golden years brings a unique set of challenges.
Watching the news these days is tricky, and not only because any good news is hard to find. Fires are often burning, or floods are happening. Reports about human lives lost and property damage are devastating. Famine, war, and even pestilence bring down millions of good people.
I think about starting over, and how much harder it is when you are older. A young person can cast their imagination into the future and effortlessly come back with plans that will take decades to complete. And that is okay. The physical body is capable of decades of hard work, and it can back up that vision of the future. Or maybe they take life one day at a time, knowing that the future will take care of itself. The young are comfortable with every option because time is on their side, even with mistakes.
After fifty, everything changes.
At fifty, a person is well into adulthood, and there is no room for mistakes. Your body has begun to betray you. What was once a no-brainer might not work anymore. High-paying jobs might be gone or impossible to get, and your capacity, physical or otherwise, might preclude your ability to get and keep such a role.
Starting again as an older person is a whole new ballgame.
You might have decades of life still in front of you, but it’s no longer a given, and any mistakes feel like a loss you can’t afford.
As challenges go, losing everything in mid-life or beyond is a very tall order.
Let me share what I have learned. I am building my life again. This time, I am wiser, and the foundation I’m laying is as solid as I can make it.
- Some Hopelessness is Normal — It may not be what you want to hear or feel but guess what? It happens. Life can knock the stuffing out of you. You might think that you are too old to make a comeback. You might be sick already or find yourself facing other challenges that are only complicated by losing your home, your possessions, your memories, and all of your money. You may feel like the oldest, most hopeless person on earth. You may not recognize yourself. You may cry in a way that you didn’t even know was possible. Let yourself. All that sorrow needs to come out. Be kind and loving to yourself even if no one else understands. It may come out of you for a long time, even a few years. Let it.
- Triage and Keep Moving — Assess the damage and what you need to get yourself back to some semblance of normalcy. For me, it was a job and a rented apartment. I was able (thank god) to keep my pets and some of my belongings. I also have had a lot of support from my extended family. I’m very blessed and lucky. It’s still on me to provide for myself and function even though I have been gutted.
- Work One Problem at a Time — Whatever the challenges are that now belong to you, work at them. If you need to find a place to sleep and food to eat, that is your job. If you need a job, then find one of those. Whatever it is that you need, keep working at it. You might cry yourself to sleep every night, and maybe you don’t even get up. Perhaps you give up completely. Okay. Give up. Just lay there for a day or a week. But then, get up and do something to move forward, no matter how small. You might be old and broke, but as long as you are still breathing, you can make a step to heal your life. You can do this.
- Rinse and Repeat — It takes working steps 1, 2, and 3 over and over again in many combinations until you find your equilibrium. For me, hope has begun to flutter in my heart again, and it feels so light and good. There have been many points where I felt so bleak and overwhelmed that suicide seemed like the most logical and best choice. Many times. In those dark hours, I cried out to God, the angels, and my ancestors for help. I believe they must have lent me their goodness and strength because I am still here today and because hope is once again rising in my heart.
In my case, my life was ruined because of my choices. Berating myself for my stupidity was — and sometimes still is — a part of my grieving process.
I have begun to notice that every single day people are thrown into desperate chaos by life itself, and life has no never mind about your age, about your frailty, about your achievements or your plans.
Life is constantly changing; lives are continually upended and ruined by natural disasters, by war, by plague, famine, illness, by random acts of violence, by accidents.
Babies get cancer. Old people lose homes. This is the very nature of the world we live in.
It is without a doubt a scary experience when life shows up at your door as the wolf and tears out your heart. What a difference it is from those moments in time when you watched it happening to other people in the world from the safety of your couch and your fat bank account!
Life breaks you apart.
And the crazy thing is, you can handle it.
Be afraid but don’t give up. Call on God first, get some sleep, and get back to problem-solving tomorrow.
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