New Year is a time for counting your blessings and for looking forward to better things, to new hope and new opportunities. It should bring a spirit of adventure and anticipation of new doors opening. I like to think there’s an angel responsible for driving this process. I wondered at one time whether it might be a Fairy – a New Year Fairy like the Christmas Fairy but I find it hard to believe in fairies so I’ll stick to the New Year Angel.
I suspect the Angel in charge of my age group is a bit pissed-off. The Over-75s would be the hardest group to deal with: reluctant to admit they are blessed in any way, full of complaints about how hard life is and determined to hoard their wealth and keep it from the upstart younger generation. I can imagine her (my angel is definitely female!) giving a big sigh and opening her ledger.
“Ok, John, let’s look at your blessings first before we get on to the hard bit. I see you’ve been married nearly 56 years; that’s good. Less than 5% of marriages reach that milestone. You’re nearly 79 which makes you the longest-lived male in your family tree. Keep it up! You’ve been retired for 12 years when most males in Australia die long before that. You have a son and daughter-in-law who live in the same city. Three quarters of the world’s population would envy you your home. You live in one of the safest places on earth for surviving a pandemic and you have lots of friends who seem to like you. Anything else? Oh, yes, you have great memories of your work years and places you’ve travelled to.”
“On the debit side, you have arthritis and a crook knee, you need glasses for reading and can’t survive without your diabetes medication. You take so many tablets each day, you almost rattle. You’re annoyed that you can’t get on a plane to visit your great-grandchildren or visit one of the places in the world you love.”
“I think we’ll leave discussion of your plans for the future until we know what’s going to happen with the pandemic. In the meantime, on a scale of 1 to 5, I would give your life a 4.5. Any comments?”
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