“Lordy, I’m Forty!” “Nifty at Fifty!” – even turning thirty gets its own (dubious) endorsement with “Over the Hill.” But sixty? How do we acknowledge that particular threshold?
The increasingly promoted “Sexy at Sixty” is problematic for me personally. I’m very happy to be regarded as sexy by my partner, but aiming to appear so in a more public way has a faint whiff of desperation about it. Perhaps I’m thinking here of repeated cosmetic surgeries and plunging décolletage - the stop-the-clock measures otherwise sensible, mature people engage in in the hope that therein happiness lies. The genuine “sexy at sixty” types I see in life and in the media, however, do not appear as if sexiness was their single purpose; they seem more so simply to convey confidence and vitality and depth of character. And that is sexy.
How can we honor the sixty benchmark in a way that suggests affirmation of its opportunity? All it takes is a cursory reading of the daily obituaries to recognize what an exceptional gift it is to live half a century, let alone a decade beyond that. Michael Jackson’s recent demise was another startling reminder of the arbitrariness of one’s lifespan. There are no guarantees, regardless of who we are. To live to be sixty feels like an extraordinary blessing of its own.
Hmm, “Blessed Be at Sixty”? How’s that for a catchphrase? I rather like the sound of it, Jewish-Jainist-Buddhist pagan that I am. Alternatively, “Blissed-Be at Sixty” sounds like a good aspiration as well. I like the idea of committing myself to what brings me bliss, of invoking all my experience of the gift of existence into a decade of celebration.
That, of course, leaves the next decades. “Heavenly at Seventy”? “Elated at Eighty?” “So Fine at Ninety”? “Thunderin’ at 100″? Perhaps we each can find the phrase that captures our particular affection for each of our anniversary decades, and in so doing add to a sense that our lives have meaning and purpose no matter what our age.