Looking Back

It used to be, when I was young, that I would count the minutes and hours waiting for some event. Always looking forward, never back. Looking back never carried the significance that looking forward did. Counting the minutes until the school-day was done, until the school-year was over, until school was done for good. You see where I'm going. Everything was looking forward - school, job, family, retirement.

Well, retirement came, rather quickly if you ask me. And suddenly it's no longer looking forward but looking back. Retrospect doesn't happen with minutes and hours either. It's a decade at a time. It really is funny how that works. Yes, each decade was significant in its own way but still, there was so much crammed into each that you would think looking back could be minced a little finer than ten-year periods.

The first decade, a little foggy in the first few years, was basically about survival. Childhood illness, childhood blunders and dangers, school. The second decade was a chance to take flight from the nest. New freedoms and responsibilities. From my twenties to my thirties, the third decade, was really all about learning how to get along in the hurly-burly of the workaday world. The fourth decade was young family and young career. A chance to put into practice what was learned up to now. 

The age from forty to fifty, or the fifth decade, was the power decade. All the skills were firmly established and self-confidence was at an all-time high. Retirement was not even on the distant horizon, the body was still young and strong, and the work skills could be taken anywhere to do anything. The possibilities were huge. Yowser.

Suddenly, in the sixth decade, the prospect of retirement rolled up on the horizon. It really came as a bolt from the blue. Hmm! Pension. Work now became important in a different sense. How could it provide lasting benefits? Also the body showed signs of needing a gentler pace.

Now, nearing the end of the seventh decade, all the foregone decades seem to come into focus. A lot of water under the bridge? Yes. Life went in many different directions, usually with little planning but it just went where it went. All of it good. But for some reason, the previous decades stand out as ten-year milestones with their own particular colour or flavour. There was a little overlap of decades but predominantly they are remembered as their own. What will the seventh decade be remembered as? It's too soon to tell. I will have to look back.