Photo courtesy of Dr Denise Taylor
Dr Denise, retirement guru, makes life more fun by going to music festivals. She has been going to them for years and years. But this time was different. It wasn’t just that it was a great festival in amongst trees. Because now, she makes life more fun by taking a chair with her.
Oh unheard of sacrilege! A chair at a music festival? What was wrong with the ground where she had sat so many times previously? A good question. But of course, nothing was wrong with the ground.
Her story about her chair reminded me of a similar experience, but without a chair. My son bought tickets to a pop concert for my husband and me. It was in a lovely art deco building which quickly filled up with fans. We were all standing and of course as it filled ever fuller, there was a push forward towards the stage. As the music blared out, we all moved in time, each in our little bubble of space, our arms above our heads, beating out the rhythm.
It was fun, but tiring, far more tiring than I ever remembered from the days when I used to dance the night away. So we sank back to the walls and slid down to sit on the hard, cold, uncomfortable floor. It would have made life more fun with a chair even though just sitting on the floor helped to stop it being quite so tiring.
Comfortable Canvas Makes Life More Fun
So Denise’s story really resonated with me, (especially when I saw the chair was pink). In her photo at the top, you can just see a little bit of the pink canvas chair with is arm rest and its cup holder. We have similar canvas chairs, albeit red, on our boat. They feel like the height of luxury after a dampish patch of field, a cold concrete floor (even a beautifully polished one) or a hard wooden deck (that also might be wet).
Those canvas fold up chairs really do the job after a lot of standing around or a whole load of winching or dancing. We certainly could have done with them at our concert rather than the cold clasp of the concert hall floor. Chairs would have made life more fun.
It’s Not the Ground or the Floor that’s Missing Out
The question is not really about the ground or the floor. Despite the variability of the weather, they don’t essentially get damper, muddier or harder than they have been previously. It is about ourselves, the changes we have undergone as the years go by. You don’t notice how the years alter how you are able to function.
Maybe you were ill for a while and your energy didn’t quite make its way back to full speed ahead. You do a bit less here, you buy a labour saving device there and suddenly life is easier. Great, yes? Well maybe not so great if it means that you don’t replace effort with some other exercise and your muscles atrophy.
We want to enjoy our later years, have all the fun that we missed out on when we studied or worked for too long hours. It’s no fun to miss out now that we are older and have the time. We want to make life even more fun than ever before.
So How Can You Make Life More Fun?
This is the million dollar question isn’t it? We want a peaceful happy time in this third part of our life. But how can you make life more fun and enjoy it just as much as you can. Like me, I’m sure you aim to pick up your grandchildren, cuddle them and play with them. Then, you will chase them round the garden or up the stairs to bed.
Then it’s your turn to have your grown up fun. Maybe you want to travel, go to festivals, live in a nice clean house, do the gardening, go out with friends in the evenings, sing, dance, swim and cycle. Learning new things, helping others and filling your time with interesting, absorbing projects will be your daily occupations, just like so many of us older folk. Being older and maybe a bit frailer doesn’t mean you can’t have lots of friends calling on you to come and do exciting things.
Well, like Denise, you can only start with the things within your own power. And one of those things can be to swallow your pride and take a chair with you! Be proud of the choices you make rather than embarrassed. Be like those of us who are still getting out there. It makes life more fun, despite the effects of ageing.
Who Makes Life More Fun for YOU?
It’s your choice. You are the one who makes life more fun. One thing is to stop pretending that you can do as much as you used to be able to do when young. If you accept that you can’t do everything you used to, it doesn’t mean that your miss out on making life fun. It just might mean that you may reject sitting on the ground or the floor and choose a chair instead.
Maybe occasionally you can allow ourselves to slide into the tempting decline of allowing our muscles to slumber and choose to sit in a chair. After all, most people do just that. It’s a valid choice. And if you are out there making life fun, then maybe it means that you packed in some exercise to get to the place where you sit down in your chair. Yes, you also had the extra effort of carrying the chair there too!
So job done, exercise taken, reward of sitting in chair received. No embarrassment at all. We can wave at all the people who stump past us looking for somewhere comfortable to sit on the ground.
But What’s Fun About the Chair?
The very sight of a chair brings up the image of sitting. That’s what chairs are for. But sitting is the new smoking. It’s bad for us, we’re not supposed to do it. Denise says that she still stood up when the bands were playing. (That was more than I did for the second half of the concert we went to. I remained stuck to the floor, leaning uncomfortably against the wall.)
But maybe, for us, a chair can be seen as a reminder to stand up and do something! Like wave your arms in the air while you enjoy the music. Then, you can come back to your chair and appreciate that comfortable canvas all the more, knowing that you made the effort that makes life more fun. Then you reap the rewards of carting the chair around. It did its job, enabling you to enjoy having more fun while at the same time being busy helping yourself to live just a little bit longer.
No Solution is Perfect but it’s Only You Who Makes Life More Fun
None of us will regain our youth and there are no health guarantees either. But we can all shift the odds in our own favour, just a little bit. And that’s by using our ingenuity to make our lives more fun. Yes, it’s you who makes life as an older person more fun even though it may have tired bits in it.
Going to festivals definitely comes into the makes life more fun category, along with embracing trees and listening to music. Not to mention bashing down the stereotypical view of older people not doing anything interesting. Denise is a great example to follow.
And even sitting in a chair in a vastly different environment, full of laughing, happy and maybe drunk people, is much more entertaining than sitting in a chair at home watching telly.
If you go charging off to music festivals, you’ll earn a big enhancement to your reputation with younger members of the family! Very stereotype destroying. You do want to set a good example don’t you?
So what is that makes your life more fun?
Find Dr. Denise Taylor’s article here:
Festival Life: Embracing Change and Finding New Joys
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