A letter to my 60 year old self (written at 42)

Last Friday my uncle turned 80.

I found myself thinking about what it feels like to be 80. I thought about the years he has lived, the things he has seen, the person he is now, and who he must have been at 42.

At first I thought I should write a letter to my 80-year-old self. But 80 felt very far away, almost difficult to imagine honestly. 60 felt closer, still far enough to hope, but near enough to picture the person I might be at that age.

So I wrote to her...

Dear 60-year-old me,

If you are reading this, congratulations Peace. You have made it to 60. Eighteen years is not a small thing. I hope you did not spend 5 minutes looking for your spectacles only to find them already on your head. If that has happened, accept it calmly. We have always had many thoughts running through our mind. Some of them were bound to start getting jumbled up.

First, a quick check in: did Uganda finally make it to the Indian Ocean? I hope by now we did more than imagine it and we have actual real estate there, a small Ugandan 50 x100 plot with an ocean view, a large balcony and the Uganda flag flying high. 

At 42, I still explain too much sometimes. I still replay conversations after they are over. I still want certain things to make sense immediately. So I hope by 60 you are calmer and less pulled by small things. I also hope we are not taken up by things that take so much energy.

Please tell me you kept fit. Maybe not running exactly as imagined, but still kept up daily movement. We should be at day 7,300 of consecutive days of walking/running. I hope we ran the Comrades Marathon, or at least stood at the start line once and thought, Well, here we are. If we did not, I hope there is a proper reason, not laziness or fear.

And the mountains, did we climb them? Mt Kenya? Mt, Cameroon? Simien Mountains? Maybe even the Himalayas, because some things should still feel difficult enough to remind you that you are alive.

I hope you have that Z-shaped house by the lake with two chickens. I hope you sit outside, sipping wine while you read and do not feel guilty for soft living. And if the Z-shaped house by the lake with two chickens did not happen, I hope you found some other place that felt like home.

At 42, we are kinda impatient. I still want healing to be quicker, answers sooner, plans clearer. So I hope by 60 you have stopped treating delay like failure.

And love, eish I hope this one settled well. I hope you found love that lasts and love that fits. I hope you found love that brings you joy and a companionship that is consistent and brings you peace. And if love came differently than expected, I hope you recognised it and did not let caution talk you out of joy.

Please tell me you treated your body better than you do now. That you stretched, drank lots of water before and after wine. I imagine there is now a drawer somewhere with vitamins, other supplements, and one tablet recommended by someone your age that you accepted without argument because at some point experience and pain became pretty convincing.

And your beautiful mind... please tell me it stayed awake, and you are still curious, creative, and noticing what others miss. I hope you kept writing the blogs, because at 42 they already feel like small conversations with time.

I hope you continued to travel far and wide, whether alone or with your companion, and you visited all the places that on the list we kept.

Mostly, I hope you became lighter. By this I do not mean thinner. I mean lighter in that you let go of things that were never meant to stay forever, laughing more easily and napping without guilt. I hope you laughed at yourself when you entered a room and forgetting why, then waited there until the reason returned.

And because 60 means life has taught you things 42 cannot yet know, I know there must have been loss too. Some people who were here at 42 may not be there at 60. Some voices may now live only in memory. Some versions of life may have ended before you were ready. I hope you carried that gently. I hope grief softened where it needed to, and that love remained larger than absence.

And if life did not go exactly as planned, I hope you were gentle with yourself about that too. At 42, I still think there is time for many things, but I also know time moves quickly.

So if some dreams changed, if some people left, if some plans never happened exactly as imagined, I hope there was still enough joy to say the years were full.

Take care of your knees. Keep your joy. Protect your peace. And if anyone asks what your generation learned, tell them we survived interesting times and still found reasons to laugh. 

Maybe by 60 you will already understand something I only started to notice watching Uncle's 80th birthday, that after all the years, what you are left with is not always what we thought would matter most.

With faith, hope and love, 

Your 42-year-old self