One Thing or Another: Life, Aging, and the Absurdities Of It All

By Mark McNease

The Go-Go Years: Doing, Going, Seeing While We Can

My husband Frank talks a lot these days about our ‘Go-Go’ years, that time of life we’re in when it’s probably a good idea to do the travel we want to, go to the places we’d like to see, and do the things our bodies still permit us to do. We love to cruise, and sail away on at least two a year. But we also like to take short, two-night trips here and there, and even a long one coming up in April – my first road trip since I was a child. Eight nights, with stops in Roanoke, Savannah, Wilmington, and Baltimore. That’s a lot of travelogues!

Financial advisors use the term to describe this window of time — early retirement, roughly — when we’re healthy enough to move about unaided. I’m exaggerating, but that’s the basic premise. I also have to say I don’t refer to myself as retired, since I teach workshops, write scary novels, and create the kind of content you’re reading now. This time precedes the Slow-Go years, and finally the No-Go years, which seem self-defining.

The idea is straightforward: there’s a period in our lives when our bodies are still reasonably cooperative, our minds are mostly our own, and our calendars aren’t entirely controlled by doctors’ appointments. This is the time to go. To do. To see. To finally take that trip to Spain or that cruise to Alaska. To eat that good pasta in the place where they actually make it.

The clock has always been ticking, of course, but somewhere around sixty, which I see in the rearview mirror, it gets louder.

The Go-Go Years aren’t about being reckless. They’re not an invitation to bungee jump off a cliff, unless that’s your thing. They’re about not waiting until waiting is all we’re able to do, about not waiting for the perfect moment, or until ‘the right time.’

They are also, to be frank, about the realization that we are not going to live forever, and that the places we want to see and the things we want to do won’t be coming to our doorstep to make it easier.

That’s essentially the philosophy of the Go-Go Years, applied to everything. Use your best dinnerware if you have it, take the trip, make the reservation at the restaurant that feels too expensive, call the friend you’ve been meaning to call since last spring. Do the things you imagine doing it’s still possible.

Because the Slow-Go Years are coming. I can sense them in my bones. I don’t run unless it’s an emergency, sensibly concerned I’ll trip and break a bone – again! I takes steps one at a time, conscious of each one and the weight-bearing required. I look at our bathroom and wonder if a walker could get through the door. It’s just the truth of it.

So go, and go some more. Even if you’re a homebody who enjoys not going anywhere, determine those things you want to do, stories you want to write, pictures you want to draw, friends you want to play cards with, go-go for it.