The exhaustion of getting old — next year, I’m embracing the reverse bucket list with vigour

This is my last column before Christmas. Inconceivable! I woke up one morning this week resolved to apply for a writing course beginning in February. That is, February 2024.

That it is the end of November fills me with astonishment and distress. Where has 2024 gone? And how come I didn’t notice its passing?

If you’re like me, you need something that marks moments in the year. (A big marker for me is always my birthday, and it’s my birthday on 30 November.)

These moments allow you to place yourself at a specific time in the year so it worms into the memory as an event that carves up the timeframe.

I’ve had an unforgettable few years, dotted with special holidays with special friends. Greece – Athens and Corfu – in September last year. Amsterdam last Christmas. Eckernförde, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, Christmas 2022.

This year has been marked with other, less-pleasant memories: prohibitively expensive teeth rejuvenation that included 3D-printed white porcelain crowns, which replaced a trip to the Venice Biennale in April.

I also buried one of my dearest friends at the beginning of May. The unexpectedness of her death, spurred by the speed at which her illness progressed, left me reeling all year at the randomness of life.

I sold my apartment and moved house (with Covid-19), bought a new car and lost 15kg. I have not yet registered for the writing course.

So, this time of year is especially contemplative for me and involves much mulling – birthdays always invite reflection and evaluation. What to do next year? What to plan now so as to avoid another runaway year?

As you age (a same-aged cousin reminded me recently that we are 14 years from 80), speeding up completing things on your “bucket list” takes on an urgency.

Neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and change its structure and function, is the new catchphrase. This response to internal and external stimuli is hailed in videos that extol the virtues of brushing your teeth standing on one foot (for balance) and doing chair yoga (for flexibility and so that you don’t fall over and break something because you haven’t been brushing your teeth standing on one foot).

Look at websites for retirees and you will be bombarded with things older people can do to encourage brain plasticity. There is the constant promise that you never have to get old. All you have to do is play chess, walk the Camino, learn a new language, sign up for an art appreciation university course. (You can opt for no final exams as you’re not doing it for a credit, a friend suggested.)

You can volunteer at a local shelter because helping others helps you to realise how lucky you are to be alive, yes, but also gives you the comfort and virtuousness that come from helping others.

Or you could join a choir. Samir Savant, an Instagram guru I follow, says that when you sing, blood is pumped through your body, which stimulates the production of three great hormones: endorphins and dopamine, which relax you and promote well-being, and oxytocin, the hormone produced when a mother sings to her baby (or when you look lovingly at your dog, he says).

Savant (probably not his real name) says singing reduces production of cortisol, the bad, stress-inducing hormone.

Better still, people my age tell me that the University of the Third Age is a godsend. U3A, as it’s known, is an international movement whose aims are the education and stimulation of mainly retired people – those in their third “age” of life.

The busy schedule of ageing. (Photos: Unsplash; Graphics: Freepik; Vecteezy)

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.