The Third Act: Workarounds

Ok. A new year. If you’re my age, or older, you’re now in full awareness mode. I read somewhere that in galactic or geologic or anthropologic time (I don’t remember which), one life will have only lasted an hour. That would mean, at my age, I have the equivalent of a few nanoseconds left, if that. Holy you know what!

We oldsters aren’t in the mood to wait until it’s gone to appreciate what we had. Instead, to riff on Theodore Roosevelt’s quote, we do what we can in the time that is left with the resources we have. The older we get, the more those resources include workarounds.

In the before times (under 65 years of age), New Year’s resolutions reflected our certainty that with better time management and a little extra discipline, any goal was possible: fitness, financial success, fame, finding the perfect partner, health, happiness…. Now, in the goodbye years, staying active, slim and healthy still rank high, but key to achieving them requires coming up with new and better approaches, with quirky, creative solutions that head problems off at the pass. It’s a lifehack skill essential to managing the multitude of unanticipated economic, social, physical or neurological challenges that, I guarantee, show up in the latter years.

Boomers are well suited to coming up with ingenious detours. We might as well be called the duct tape or binder twine generation. Born before the cyber age and growing up on the heels of the Great Depression, when phrases like “mend and make do” were ubiquitous, there was a lot each of us had to figure out — had the privilege of figuring out. It was a form of fun, a confidence builder. As kids, we felt like discoverers and inventors at once, had sovereignty over the bicycles, boats, pickups and fences we fixed; over the basketball hoops, tennis backboards and water ski jumps we fashioned. That curiosity and can-do distinguishes us still. I don’t mean to suggest there isn’t a cyber age equivalent to this. I just don’t know what it is, and it seems most of our eggs are in that basket. What’s the work-around if there’s a widespread cyberattack, for example?

What might Boomer-style New Year’s work-around goals look like? How about getting a custom boot for your bum foot so you can still, at 80, enjoy a ski outing. When it’s too cold and icy to go to the gym, do sit-ups and stretches while watching television. Better yet, turn off the TV, strap on your Yaktrax, grab your walking sticks, put on an extra layer and go outside. Fancy diets not working? As an octogenarian doctor in the Midwest is quoted as saying, “If it tastes good, spit it out.” Appearances? When your phone tells you your face doesn’t match, make your own facial scrub and apply. You’ll instantly feel better, even if your phone isn’t fooled. Bathroom hack? Rig a rope to help you out of the tub. Just don’t attach it to the shower curtain rod.

In all seriousness, one thing is clear: Boomers and youngers alike will have to beef up work-around skills over the course of the next four years. Whatever our positions or opinions, it will be important to pay attention to what is taking place; to be aware of misleading news cycles and information campaigns; to be diligent fact-checkers. The road to hell is paved with citizenry who got lazy about keeping their country and its leaders honest. Make it a New Year’s resolution to speak up and out for yourself and others. What’s the hack, the work-around, to make that happen?

If you find the news noise is drowning out your do-the-right-thing voice, get out of your bubble, push through your troubles and head out into the desert. And, speaking of work-arounds, if you’re unable to go on your own, get someone to take you. Nature teaches us to go inside, we must go outside. The high desert’s grandeur reminds us of our small stature. We’re dwarfed by mountains migrating across desiccated lake beds; awed by alkaline dust devils trading colors and places with the wind. There, we can hear the bigger invitation. Sometimes the best work-around is right out your back door.

—Poet and author Ellen Waterston is a woman of a certain age who resides in Bend. “The Third Act” is a series of columns on ageing and ageism.

This article appears in The Source Weekly January 23, 2025.