June 2025
By Richard Fleming
Photo courtesy of Natalia Blauth
As I look back over my blog posts from the past few years, it seems I may be whining excessively about growing old. Complaining. Bellyaching. Moaning about the challenges. I do not mean to come across that way. There is much to celebrate about aging. It is far better to grow old than to not grow old, if you catch my drift.
And we do enjoy many nice perks. We get lower ticket prices at the movies, if we can forego our afternoon nap to go in the middle of the day. We get senior discounts on public transit and when entering national parks. It is fun to play with our grandchildren, knowing our responsibilities will end at 5:00 pm. And it’s even more fun when we indulge their requests for cookies and ice cream, then return them to their parents just as sugar-fueled hyperactivity takes over.
There are many such bennies available only to the older generations. As time goes by, I am coming to realize that one of the nicest advantages is we no longer need to “sweat the big stuff.” When we were young, say under age 50, a common piece of wisdom from the experts (today they’re called influencers, I suppose) was, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” This advice implied we should spend more time and energy on life’s most important matters. We should focus on the big stuff. Things like jobs, and whether to stay in our job or look for another one. Who to marry and how to make the marriage successful. How best to raise responsible and loving children and help usher them out into the real world. What kind of home to live in, and where. Assisting our aging parents as they moved onwards.
These goals and challenges certainly do constitute the big stuff. And when we were young it was appropriate to spend more time on these matters than on items of less consequence, like why we weren’t invited to a friend’s party or which summer blockbuster movie was the best.
But the years pass by, we grow old, and the tables turn.
For seniors, at least for many of us, the big stuff gradually recedes in importance. For the most part we no longer need to spend time and energy on life’s major challenges. Questions around marriage are largely off the table. Ditto for responsible child-rearing. What to do as far as job and career – non-issues. What kind of home to live in, and where – these might still require some temporary attention, for example whether to move into a supportive living community, or downsize, or move closer to children or grandchildren. But once these questions get answered, they typically require little subsequent attention. Seniors move less often than young folks.
To sum up, old folks no longer need to dwell on the big stuff. And this sure takes a load off. The one notable exception is health problems. Those can take over our lives at any moment, driving everything else into the background. In this post, I am talking about seniors who are lucky enough to not yet be in that situation.
So what should we seniors be focusing on? We don’t want to appear to be aimless souls, drifting around with no purpose or goals. In our golden years, I feel it is appropriate for us to switch to “sweating the small stuff.” Like whether to cook tonight or order from a takeout place. Whether to clear out and organize the bathroom drawers today or tomorrow. Or is next month perhaps a better option? How much longer can we go without cleaning the car before driving around town becomes embarrassing? Whether to watch the fourth episode of “Adolescence” tonight or tomorrow. Small things like these.
(Side note: Adolescence, on Netflix, is the best thing to appear on television in years. The acting, the story, and the ideas it explores are amazing, and its one-take one-camera filming technique is breathtaking. The icing on the cake is it consists of only four one-hour episodes. That is an ideal length for us seniors. Our attention span and memory limitations are way too challenged to watch programs like Game of Thrones with its, what, 400 episodes and 38 major characters to keep track of.)
The nice thing about sweating the small stuff is we can do so without actually breaking a sweat. The little everyday challenges we face will not make or break our days. Nor do we lose sleep over them. And it can even be fun to make small decisions about small stuff, because there are rarely wrong choices. Either way we decide, things will be fine.
Sweating the small stuff can even be rewarding. When I decide to go to the hardware store tomorrow instead of today, it opens up new possibilities to explore. Maybe I can sit on the couch and finish my book club book this afternoon. Or if it turns out I get distracted and don’t read the book, well, no big deal. Maybe I can use my free time to knock down cobwebs from the plants in our yard instead. Or should I spend more time trying to learn another language? So many options. Like they say, nothing ventured, much gained. Let’s see, did I get that right?
For us seniors, our decades spent in the workplace, raising family, and making important life decisions, earned us the right to shift our focus to easier matters. Thank goodness there is plenty of small stuff we can focus our limited energy on.
If you enjoyed reading this post, please consider forwarding it to friends who may be interested or posting a link to your social media feed. Also, if you are not yet a subscriber, it is an easy way to be notified of future posts, which I upload once or twice a month. Just enter your email address below, then check your email for a return message that requires a confirmatory click to complete the process. Subscriptions are free and no advertising will come your way.