I recently attended the birthday party of a friend who had just turned 60.  After I got the Save-the-Date, I told my friend that I probably wouldn’t be going. Not because I didn’t want to celebrate his birthday but because the party location was a bit out of my comfort zone – after all it was beyond the borders of the Stockholm subway map and everyone knows that I hate traveling. But in leu of my presence I decided to send him the Just Hilarie blog piece which I wrote nine years ago when I turned 60.

He wrote back to tell me that he read my piece but what he really wanted to know was if I had any advice for him about what to expect or consider in the next decade now that he was also turning 60. And then he made me feel guilty for not wanting to come to his party. Guilt I understand. Afterall, I am Jewish. So I told him I would be there. And…that I would give some thought to his question and try to find something pithy and enlightening to say at his party.

First I thought I could just cobble something together from some of the other pieces I had written about aging (you can find them under Aging in the word cloud to the right) but after doing some copy/pasting I felt nothing was working. Instead, I decided to start at the beginning and make a list of what had happened to me in the 9 years since my big 6 0. I figured if I made a list of the life changing, influential events that took place since that summer day nine years ago at our country house, I would be able to come up with some ideas for him.

Here was my list of events, not in order of importance but just as they happened in the timeline:

  • Mom spends a slow month dying as I sit by her bed and watch.
  • Lawsuit for unpaid (and unknown) American property taxes puts my anxiety levels through the roof and I end up taking anti-anxiety meds just to get through my days.
  • The organization I had worked for as a graphic designer, for almost 10 years, closes 6 months before I turn 65 and I am left jobless.
  • Håkan gets sick, spends 2 months in hospital and needs brain surgery.

Yeah, that should do it. That should be enough to fill a decade. No wonder I don’t want to get out of bed sometimes. But what should I tell my friend so he doesn’t end up drinking all his own booze at his party?

My first piece of advice was this:
Stay healthy. I know that everyone gives advice about exercising, taking all your vitamins and not eating a bunch of junk food. But you know what? That’s all a bunch of crap. If it helps to make you feel like you are in control of your life by doing those things, then by all means keep doing them. But if catastrophic illness strikes you, it probably doesn’t really have anything to do with exercise, vitamins or junk food. After all, James Fixx, the guy who started the jogging craze with his best-selling books about running and who preached the gospel that active people live longer, died of a heart attack on a Friday while on a solitary jog in Vermont. He was 52 years old! So, I don’t know…maybe it just means don’t jog by yourself.

Piece of advice two:
Keep on top of all your financial obligations. Know what taxes you need to pay and pay them. Don’t collect more stuff than you can afford, or need. Pay off your credit cards each month. (my mother taught me that one) Make sure you have money saved or a pension. After all who needs to have all that worry about money.
It is the real cause of wrinkles.

Piece of advice three:
Work – Keep working as long as you can (because this also applies to the previous point) but make sure it is work that you love. Or at least like. It should be something that makes you feel good about yourself, competent and appreciated by others. If you don’t get that from your work it’s time to think about retiring and finding something else that makes you feel useful and appreciated and competent. If you have been careful about point two you might be able to do this fun stuff pro-bono.

Piece of advice four:
Make phone calls. We all have that fabulous smart phone in our hands. Texting messages back and forth is great. Showing what you ate for dinner on social media is great. Email is great. But making a phone call is even greater.  A few days ago I called an old friend in New York and by old I mean I have known her a very long time – she’s actually almost 10 years younger than me. The first thing she said after hello was, “Are you OK, is everything alright? Is Håkan OK? What happened?” It took me a while to reassure her that we were all ok and that I was just calling her to say hi. We talked for over an hour. So don’t wait to call friends and family only when you have bad news. Call just to talk. Better yet – have lunch together if you are close enough. But we live in a big world and people are often far away, so call them. Use Skype if you are far away. You can look at each other and see if the other person has more wrinkles. And its cheap. See point two.

And finally, last but not least, point five:
Figure out how to laugh and do it often. Learn how to tell a joke and make other people laugh. Because life is just so crappy sometimes. It hits you when you least expect it and if you can’t laugh then you’re doomed.

So, health, work, money, loved ones and laughter.
That pretty much sums up all the advice I have to give right now. We’ll see what I can come up with in a few more years after I’ve started my big 7 0.