Courtesy of JewishSacredAging.com

Okay, I must admit that I cannot dodge this anymore. For about a year, when AARP mailers would come, I just threw them aside. I knew that if I opened them, I would immediately be sent to a home and given a walker.

I started opening those notices from AARP and Aetna a few months ago. In bold letters, they trumpeted the fact that I was closing in on 65—I just turned 50—and it was time to join the Medicare club. Right! As if! That guy in the mirror is not 65. Sure, he’s a little worn around the edges, but Medicare? Get real!

Then, letters from the government arrived, announcing, with official fanfare and language, benefits and registration timetables. Friends advised me that correcting the mistake could be done via the computer. "Easy as pie," said my buddy Steve, who had already signed up. Lo and behold, a very official letter from Social Security arrived this week. It shows tables and lists of numbers and all kinds of stuff. I am running out of time. I made the call and was handled nicely. I am almost there. Not funny! How did this happen?

I think that in churches and synagogues and mosques, there should be a small ceremony marking this passage. Why not? We celebrate anniversaries and other birthdays. What is more meaningful in our society than turning 65? In fact, maybe there should be a real celebration. A ceremony that praises people who reach this milestone and are still active, alive, and looking forward to life, rather than preparing to fade away.

The longevity revolution has made it possible for us to achieve untapped new heights of personal, and by extension, communal worth. Why not celebrate this achievement? Believe it or not, a new ritual—a simchat chochma—has emerged from the Jewish feminist movement in recent years. In English, the term means “a celebration of wisdom.” People have done this in their communities when reaching 65 or 70, and the language of the ritual notes that a person has real life experience and is now in a position to share some of that wisdom with his or her community and the world.

Every religious tradition has texts and language that could enhance this ritual. Why not celebrate living and life and the wisdom that we accumulate along the journey?

Each of us is a reservoir of experience that can be shared with others. Both the good and the bad times are illustrative of how we choose to live and face a world that sometimes does not conform to our expectations or dreams. Who knows what your story can mean to someone else? Who knows the value of what you have lived and how that can be supportive and caring to someone in your community who may be living those challenges and thinks that they face them all alone.

Now, if I can just get someone to fill out this paperwork!