Have you ever wondered why they call our retirement years, the years from 65 to 80 and beyond, the golden years? The phrase was actually coined in 1959 as part of an advertising campaign for Sun City, Arizona, the world’s first large-scale retirement community for active seniors. The goal, of course, was to portray retirement as a life of leisure; a time to travel, play golf, and pursue hobbies, but is it true?

For Christmas, I gave hubby a sweatshirt with one of his favourite sayings on the front. Retired: The ability to do what I want when I want. Lately whenever he wears it, he hastens to point out that it isn’t entirely true. These days, our lives seem to revolve around countless trips to the city for tests, scans, specialist appointments, and most recently, his prostate surgery. Maybe these should actually be called our rusty years because parts are continually breaking down and our bodies aren’t running as smoothly as they once did!

We certainly aren’t alone in this. At our recent senior bowling windup I looked around the table at our team and realized that all five of us either have or have had cancer. Many of our peers have had hip or knee replacements. Another has recently had a stroke and still others are waiting for biopsy results and/or surgery. No, retirement isn’t all traveling and playing!

I’m not really complaining… well, maybe just a little! I love the fact that we no longer have to rush off to work every day and that the government pays us for simply waking up every morning. I also realize that I’m fortunate to be alive. When I glance at the obituaries these days, many of the deceased are younger than me!

Some people claim that our true golden years are between 40 and 60 when we’re still physically and mentally fit and have probably reached some level of financial security. That led me to wonder, when were my golden years? When were yours? The first decade of my life, living in a waterfront house on the coast of British Columbia with the beach as my playground and the sound of the surf as my lullaby at night, was definitely golden. I look back on the years when my children were at home as golden. I loved that time of my life. There was a dark interval during the fourteen months that our oldest daughter fought her losing battle with leukemia, but even during that time, there were golden moments. When we were in our fifties, the year that we spent teaching English in Japan was golden.

2 Corinthians 4:16b says, “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” In spite of the limitations of physical aging, I have no intention of passively resigning myself to coasting along and waiting for my name to show up in the obituaries! It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” So what can we do to make these years count, whether they are golden or rusty?

We may not be able to travel as often or for as long as we once could, but I’ll cherish the relationships that we have with people both near and far and when I can’t be together with them in person, I’ll remind myself how fortunate we are to have the internet, something that we didn’t have in our younger years. When I can’t explore far away places, I’ll seek out and appreciate ones that are closer to home. I’ll continue to offer the best of myself through volunteer work. I’ll read and learn and stay as physically active as I can for as long as I can. Always, I’ll remember to be thankful!

And finally, a message for those of you who are younger, don’t waste what might be the best years of your life yearning for the golden years. After all, they might turn out to be a little bit rusty!