By Christine Vanlandingham
In a few short weeks, I’ll turn 65.
That age holds a unique place in our culture. It marks eligibility for Medicare, is often associated with retirement, and, for many people, represents a new chapter.
I can hardly claim this milestone has caught me off guard. Still, standing at the doorstep of 65 has prompted me to reflect. I am struck by the difference between the significance our society attaches to the number and how it actually feels to be the person reaching it.
My grandmother, well into her seventies, used to say that she still felt like the same 16-year-old girl inside. When I was younger, I could not fully understand what she meant. I can now.
I still recognize the teenage girl I was in the mid-1970s. She is curious, hopeful, and convinced there is meaningful work to do and so much more to learn. Thankfully, the polyester bell bottoms are gone. The frizzy hair remains, although modern hair products help considerably!
Underneath it all, that girl is still there.
The difference is not that I have become someone else over the past five decades. The difference is that life has handed me a much larger toolbox. Along the way, I have accumulated the perspective, relationships, and experience that only time can provide.
Some of the lessons I value most came from the times I got it wrong. The things that did not turn out as planned, the mistakes I made, and the opportunities I was not yet ready for often taught me more than my successes ever could.
Failure strips away certainty and replaces it with understanding. It teaches us to listen more carefully, judge less quickly, and extend more grace – both to ourselves and to others. The lessons are not always easy, but they become valuable additions to the toolbox we carry into whatever comes next.
Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of working alongside older adults, caregivers, and families navigating aging in all its opportunities as well as its complexity. I have sat at kitchen tables with people worried about remaining independent, witnessed caregivers perform extraordinary acts of love, and met people in their eighties and nineties who were still planning what came next.
Those experiences have taught me that aging is far more individual than the stereotypes suggest. What people share is not a common age. It is a desire to continue living a life that reflects who they are.
At Area Agency on Aging, we have built much of our work around a simple question: What’s important to you?
It sounds simple, but it changes the conversation. Instead of beginning with needs or limitations it begins with what gives a person’s life meaning. The answer might be remaining in a beloved home, caring for a spouse, attending a grandchild’s sporting events, volunteering, tending a garden, mentoring someone, or preserving the routines that create comfort, connection, and purpose.
When we understand what is important to someone, we can help support the life that person wants to live.
As I approach 65, I find myself asking that same question. What is important to me? The answer has evolved over time, but much of what matters today would be recognizable to that 16-year-old girl: meaningful work, strong relationships, continuing to learn, being present for the people I love, making a positive difference, and contributing to something larger than myself.
Older adults are among our community’s greatest assets – and growing. They are workers, caregivers, volunteers, mentors, leaders, and neighbors who bring skills developed over a lifetime, hard-earned perspective, deep relationships, and a remarkable capacity to adapt, contribute, and care for others.
As more of us reach this stage of life, we have an opportunity to build communities that recognize those strengths and create meaningful opportunities for people to stay engaged, share what they know, connect across generations, and continue contributing in ways that matter to them.
Perhaps that is why my grandmother’s words hold such meaning for me today.
My grandmother was right. The 16-year-old girl inside me is still along for the ride. She simply has more experience, more empathy, a few scars from hard-earned lessons, and a much richer toolbox.
Perhaps that is why turning 65 feels less like crossing a finish line and more like arriving at a meaningful marker along the journey.
The question, then, is not simply what’s important to me. It’s whether I am spending my time in ways that reflect the answer.
The answer will differ for each of us and may change across the seasons of our lives. But once we know it, the next question belongs to both us and the communities we are building together. Are we investing in the relationships, perspectives, policies, and support systems that will help us live that answer and become the best version of ourselves – and of our communities — in whatever comes next?
For me, that is what this milestone represents. Not a finish line, a label, or simply a number, but another opportunity to keep building a life, and a community, around what matters most.
Christine Vanlandingham is CEO of Region IV Area Agency on Aging in Southwest Michigan. Questions on age or independence services? Call (800) 654-2810 or visit areaagencyonaging.org to learn more and get connected to the support you deserve. The Generations column appears each weekend in The Herald-Palladium.