[Vision2020] Happy Birthday Tom Hansen

[Donovan Arnold]

Just wanted to wish you a happy 60th birthday. Remember what George Burns said, "The trick is to make it to 100 years old because you rarely ever hear of anyone dying after that age."
 
 
Donovan Arnold

From: Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com>
To: Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Monday, August 8, 2011 1:59 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] On Turning 60


Courtesy of Monkey Mind Online at:
 
http://monkeymindonline.blogspot.com/2008/07/briefest-on-turning-sixty.html
 
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“We grow too soon old and too late smart.”
 
I first saw that little bit of folk wisdom calligraphed on a bread board with a cutesy Germanesque spelling. As I've rooted around looking for a possible source I've found it attributed as coming from the Jewish tradition, the Dutch tradition and, yes, the German. Today, my sixtieth birthday, it just feels like regular old human wisdom.
 
If only I knew then...
 
Ain't it the truth?
 
In East Asian cultures at sixty one becomes officially wise. I've tried to tell my friends this and they seem to think its supposed to be ironic or something. At least so far as it has to do with me...
 
I have to admit I don't feel particularly smarter, not particularly wiser.
 
I do feel older. That, all I have to do is look in a mirror, to confirm.
 
Lots of gray. On the tubby side. Young women are polite to me and I fear increasingly find me cute. And not in the good way...
 
On the other hand I've always felt I was born middle-aged (James, sixty isn't middle aged, I hear some whipper snappers exclaim. Sixty is old...). And these days I often feel I'm growing into my true Jamesness.
 
And, on balance, not a bad thing...
 
As our teacher Rumi sang...
 
I used to be shy.
You made me sing.
 
I used to refuse things at table.
Now I shout for more wine.
 
In somber dignity, I used to sit
on my mat and pray.
 
Now children run through
and make faces at me.
 
Not a bad thing, at all...
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I am 60 today.  My spouse is not 60. 
 
We are 38.
 
Seeya round town, Moscow.
 
Tom “celebrating the 35th anniversary of my 25th birthday” Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
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