Aging – A time to find our passion in life!

by Irwin Lengel
(Lakeland, FL)

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, what is my purpose in life at this stage of the game?

While it doesn’t happen often, I would be telling an untrue if I said the idea hasn’t crossed my mind. So, I decided to sit down and rather quickly without too much thought, try to list various items that crossed my mind when it comes to determining what my passion is now that I turned 71.

First things first, since none of us know exactly how much time is left, we should sit down and ask ourselves - what is important?

We all have dreams of what and where we might like to be. Do I have any dreams? How am I going to make them come true?

Once those dreams are out in the open, then one has to ask the question – OK – what are my strengths? Why are they important? How are you going to make your dreams come true?

Without knowing how important one’s strengths are, how can you ask yourself if you are even using them?

While I could sit here and write a bunch of powerful adjectives about myself, afterwards I would also have to say to myself, are these adjectives obvious in the way I am living my life at the moment?

Truth be told, they probably aren’t obvious otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this particular blog at the moment. I would be addressing my passion(s).

So, where do we go from here? Well, having identified various adjectives about myself, the next thing I would do would be to monitor the things I do in my life that leave me feeling good about myself, Unfortunately to be fair, I would also have to monitor the things that leave me weary or down on myself.

Having determined both the ups and downs of life, so to speak, the next step would be to make a sincere effort to do more of the former and less of the latter.

Another approach one might take at this point would be to ask: – if I won the Lotto tomorrow, what would I do differently in my life? In my situation – the first thing I would have to do is go out and buy a lotto ticket (my wife keeps teasing me by saying – “in order to win the lotto, one must play the lotto.”)

But, what if you didn’t win the lotto? What you need to do in that instance is do those things in spite of the fact that you didn’t win the lotto. Let’s face it, another question we ask ourselves at this point in our life is – what would really make me happy? If we know what makes us happy, then the secret to being happy is to find ways to make it happen.

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty sure we won’t be around forever. So here is another way of trying to find your passion at this point of your life – say to yourself – if I only had 2 or 3 more years to live, how would I want to spend the balance of my time here on earth? Then figure out how to make it happen now while you are still around. Life is too short - do not keep putting the important things off.


Another approach would be to ask friends and family what they think you are good at. Who better to ask than family and friends? As they tell you, prepare a list which will, upon completion, be a picture of your life and work. This picture should also show whether you are using your strengths. If not, determine how to incorporate them in your everyday activities so that you move forward.

Another tip, (and being truthful I would have to admit that I did not have many dreams as I was growing up), would be to try to think back and remember the dreams you had when you were a kid. Assuming that you had some dreams regarding what you hoped to be doing as a child of six or seven or even eight or nine, have you done them? If not, can you still do them?

Remember, age is just a number. We are as young as we feel. What about as you got older? Did the dreams change? What about your teenage years? Did you want to get involved in politics? Social groups? Volunteer service (Peace Corps comes to mind)? If none of these, what? As you aged, did you continue to support those values? If not, would they still be important now?

Okay, another way to try and determine one’s passion, think of the answer to this question: If asked to write your epitaph, how would you word it? Put another way, at this point in our lives, now would be a good time to decide what you would like your epitaph to say, keeping in mind that upon determining what we want it to say, the next step would be to make sure your life (or what is remaining of it) allows that to happen.

While I have things such as my writing, teaching, traveling and line dancing to occupy my days when we are not running errands or involved with community projects, fact-of-the-matter is that I am not sure I have found my true “passion” in life!

I think I am still searching. I would love to find that one special thing that I just cannot wait to get to upon waking in the morning or when the chores are done. Something that we love so much, it tends to preoccupy our mind even when we should be concentrating on the chores at hand.

Am I happy? Yes, but at times I sense the need to feel passionate about something. You know what I mean! That little something that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning anxious to get on with it!

I know there are many folks that go through their entire lives not having any passions. However, and this is just my humble opinion, bottom line – to have a fulfilling life in retirement - we should be passionate about something, have a purpose, do what’s important.

Once this happens, hopefully happiness will come to us! The day won’t just end - it will merely pause allowing us time to revitalize so that we might begin once again in the morning doing that which we find passionate about our life.

Irwin