I know the title above is advice that we seem to always get. But the trouble is most of us don’t really know who we are. We are too busy trying to live as others want us to. I am primarily talking about the social realm here, and since I am a “babe in the woods” socially you won’t get much help in this matter from me. But, what you will get is some of my personal experiences and observation of viewing this matter from the margins.

I think the biggest task, especially for those who have 500+ “friends” on whatever social media that they are chained to is to first understand what you are getting from those “friends”.  How many virtual friends do you need to replace an in-your-face real person. In my opinion it takes 1,000+.

“Fitting in” to me is a dirty word. To me it means you are living someone else’s idea of life. OK, let’s get on to how this relates to my RetCom life. I thought moving to my RetCom would require me to fit in. There is a definite social rhythm to this place. Meals at certain times, happy hour, exercise get-togethers, movies, bingo, arts & craft classes that repeat themselves over an over throughout the year. 

For many it is a comfortable sameness to life at my RetCom.  That sameness can be reassuring, but at the same time stifling. That is just the danger of sameness. We become what the  environment around us tells us to be.

I didn’t move here to stop being who I am. There is a difference between adapting to a community and surrendering to it. After the first year of trying to be what others expected me to be, I decided to go another route, of just being who I want to be.

Many residents here are extremely social. Then there are others, like me, who have chosen to shy away for all the social activities and the corresponding stress they invoke in me.

One thing I find that causes anxiety in me is that I  see so many here who struggle to even walk, I realize that is probably me in the not too distant future. I constantly hear that someone has died Aging is constantly happening around me.

At eighty years improvements might now mean getting a little stronger, standing a little straighter, eating more carefully. Fifteen years ago these type things that seemed kinda trivial.  I probably spent too much of my life focusing on accomplishments. Now I am looking for meaning, insight, and understanding. These are things I should have been working toward much earlier in my life, but they just didn’t seem important at the time. Now they do.