What Endings Means As Used Here


Sometime after the old story begins to loosen, whether it’s about retiring, family changes, or physical changes, . . . things that once worked start to fail quietly.

Not all at once.

Not catastrophically.

Just enough to be noticed.

Then ignored.

Then noticed again.

Roles that had carried weight for decades grow lighter, then awkward, then hollow.

Certainties thin.

Effort produces less return.

The familiar moves stop landing the way they used to.

At first, this feels like a problem to solve.

Most of us were trained that way.

If something stops working, we adjust.

If a role loses power, we reinforce it.

If meaning fades, we double down on purpose.

But, this time, doubling down does not help.

What is happening does not respond to improvement.

It does not want optimization.

It does not want encouragement.
It wants something to end.

That realization comes slowly, and then all at once.

Looking back, it becomes clear there were several such endings . . . more than a few.

Enough changes in enough areas of life to change the ground we thought was solid.

Each one arrives disguised as inconvenience or failure or fatigue.

Each one asks to be managed . . . and each one resists management.

A capacity relied on for years slips away.

A way of being respected no longer applies.

A sense of usefulness evaporates without explanation.

These moments aren’t clearly losses at the time . . . . so they get treated as problems . . . and that makes things worse.

Only in hindsight does it become clear that something more fundamental has been happening.

Not change in the ordinary sense . . . not transition . . . not reinvention.

It is something closer to death . . . not physical death . . .

Not emotional collapse.

Identity death . . . the passing away of things that we always took for granted . . . that we thought were us.

Leaving us with an obvious, but very difficult question: If these things that we thought defined us aren’t true anymore, then who the heck are we now?
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What has to end
Staying healthy
A note for new readers

What has to end

It happens to all of us. Successful guys, smart guys, average guys, total flops, we all reach some point in our lives when what we’ve been doing throughout our adult years stops working. We get the “gold watch” or the equivalent and discover that our knees won’t let us play all the golf they we’d imagined, or just puttering around our house and getting up whenever we want gets boring pretty fast, etc. etc.

There are all kinds of things that have to end. These are what I have called deaths for simplicity (and maybe some shock value too), but they could have been called transitions, or life tasks.

A job ends, a marriage shifts, a parent dies, a friendship cools, our body changes. Men our age don’t usually talk about these things much, but we feel them. This space gathers the pieces . . . stories, reflections, practical notes . . . for men who are navigating the long traverse of letting go and beginning again.

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Staying healthy

Staying healthy is what it all rests on.

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A note for new readers

Men60Plus is intended for men who’ve lived long enough to know that life doesn’t resolve in tidy packages with perfect solutions written in the return address. If you’re here because something ended, whether recently or long ago, you’re in the right place. Take what you need. Leave the rest for another man who might need it more or for whom it might fit better.

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What We Mean by Endings
Every man reaches a point where the old story no longer fits. Careers close. Roles shift. Friendships thin out. The things that once defined us don’t hold the same weight. These endings aren’t failures — they’re signals that something new is asking for space.What We Mean by Endings
Every man reaches a point where the old story no longer fits. Careers close. Roles shift. Friendships thin out. The things that once defined us don’t hold the same weight. These endings aren’t failures — they’re signals that something new is asking for space.

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