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Staying young by maintaining the trends of your youth? I don't think so! If you want to stay young at heart, then do something, anything, lots of things that you have never done before. I personally think that is a much better way to stay young.

I had a minor mid-life crisis when I turned 40. It seemed so old at the time, although now that I have turned sixty, it looks more like the prime of my life. However I was feeling a bit down at the time and was trying to find ways to shake it off. Luckily we decided to visit Expo 88 in Brisbane. The exhibits were wonderful but what attracted me the most was the upside down roller coaster. I had avoided roller coasters for years after my first, gut-wrenching experience, but now I looked at that roller coaster and thought: "Why not? If not now, when?" And then I made a small but life-changing decision: from now on, I thought, I am going to do something new every year for the rest of my life. I got on that roller coaster and screamed the whole way round. It was so much fun, I got back on and rode it seven more times.

Twenty years on and I have kept that promise to myself. I have sky dived, bungee jumped, abseiled and ridden a camel. I have travelled to new places and learned new skills and it has kept me young at heart, even while my skin goes wrinkly and my hair goes grey. Sure I am aging, but I am doing it as disgracefully as possible and enjoying every minute of it. Now that I am sixty, I have changed the rules slightly. Everything I do now is new because it's the first time I have done it since turning sixty. So if I bungee jump again, it will count because it will be my first post-sixty bungee jump.

Recently I watched a movie, The Bucket List, in which Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson played characters who were dying of cancer and who decided to make a list of the things they wanted to do before they "kicked the bucket". It was a very good movie and afterwards I thought about my own bucket list. Luckily, I am not dying of cancer and probably have another 20 plus years left since I have good genes and a reasonably healthy life style, but I was pleased to find that I had already ticked off many of the things that would have otherwise been on my own bucket list.

There are still plenty of things I want to do: go for a balloon ride, fly a glider, visit the Antarctic, dive different reefs, learn new skills, read new books, sing new songs. And there are lots of things I want to do again to add to my post sixties experiences: jump out of a plane again, go back to Canada, New Zealand and Alaska, ski another live volcano, ride another fast horse. If something happens and I die while doing it, no problem. At least I will die happy and young at heart and I won't be saying, "gee, I wished I'd lived more while I had the chance!"

Learn more about this author, M E Skeel.
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