We had arrived at the beach to take in the sunset and made a spur of the moment decision to stay overnight. It helped that we had a self-contained camper van with 40 litres of water in two water tanks, and a lithium battery to power our devices and the fridge. We had a portable gas stove, and kitchen supplies. We were free to camp practically anywhere we wanted.
Most nights we paid for a parking spot in a caravan or camping park, where there is power and water for each parking spot, and communal toilets and hot water showers, coin-operated washers and dryers, and a camp kitchen with barbecue pits, stoves and wash-up sink. But that night we had decided to camp by the beach, looking into the ocean, untethered to power or water.
As I woke up that morning, and brisk-walked around the coast before returning to the van to make coffee and then head out to nearby Denmark town to attend morning mass on Palm Sunday, I reminded myself that this was why I had made a lifestyle change in my 50s – unbinding myself from Singapore, and from full-time corporate work, to come to Perth to fend for myself as a freelance writer, in return for a flexible lifestyle with time to travel, and the freedom to explore other work or study options.
It turns out I’m not unique – a feature in The Straits Times recently covered women who reinvented themselves in their 50s, joining a start-up, doing a PhD or writing a book. I read each of their stories with a sense of admiration and recognition.
Many women (and men too) who spent their early decades fulfilling social or family expectations – of raising a family, building a career, being a dutiful wife/husband, mother/father, daughter/son – decide to free themselves from such expectations to make decisions that resonate more fully with who they are as individuals. Jungian psychology explains mid-life as the period when the mature individual needs to lean inwards to integrate their own personality. At risk of over-simplification, this requires knitting together the conscious, ego-driven self, with the unconscious, more soul-driven self into an integrated whole.
In my own life, I’ve lived through the arc of those developmental urges and learnt from the journey.
I wrote about the temptation to over-attend to the ego-driven, achievement-oriented self in one’s youth, in an earlier column.
In my 20s and 30s, I paused the “soul” parts of my personality that hankered after beauty and adventure, choosing to focus on material aspirations first. But now that I’m in the post-materialistic phase of life, in a manner of speaking, the sense of adventure is re-awakening.
It’s been a work in progress, and I’ve learnt in recent years to heed the call of the wild. Here’s what helped me rekindle the sense of adventure in mid-life.
You can do it alone
I first started heeding the call to adventure in my own life during Covid-19.
When shops and restaurants shut, the call of nature rang out loud and clear. I had started cycling just before Covid-19, and learnt how to manage my own bike – how to fold it, carry it in and out of the car, how to check for brakes and how to pump my own tyres. When social distancing kicked in, I took to cycling on my own. At first I felt anxious and a bit pathetic for doing so. But as I grew in confidence, I eventually got so used to it, that solo riding became my preferred mode. It still is, as I enjoy the sense of solitude, and the way my mind can expand freely, alone, into the land as I ride.
When you first start making small changes to your life, you will feel anxious, self-conscious, fearful, perhaps a bit silly. Stay with those feelings, laugh gently at them, but make the change anyway. It may be something as simple as taking a different route home; or making that phone call to a friend; or going for a walk around the neighbourhood on your own. Challenge yourself safely and gently, but challenge yourself, and make the change. And as you make one successful small change, motivate yourself to make another, and another.
After learning to cycle alone, I occasionally joined group outings on my own and signed up for walks and island trips. But I decided to go on my little expeditions, with or without company. Learning, and enjoying, doing things by yourself is liberating and empowering, especially for women who have always had a partner, family member or offspring, to do things with.
Next: solo travelling. On a trip to Spain, I spent two days by myself before a friend could join me. Meals are always a challenge when travelling alone – eating by yourself in a crowded restaurant full of festive chatter can feel lonely and disappearing into your device to read or watch a movie is a temptation. Instead, I “trained” myself to have a device-free lunch one afternoon in a courtyard restaurant in Barcelona. I still remember the hour spent there, soaking in the ambience, feeling the breeze, looking at the way the light filtered through the leaves in the square, and the sense of achievement I felt.
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The next challenge I set for myself was solo travelling in Western Australia, driving 130km from Perth to New Norcia, a historic monastic town where I spent four lovely days by myself.
One of my dreams is to take the camper van for a solo camping trip. It will require a series of interim challenges to get to that holy grail: learning to drive the 3-litre van, learning how to set up the tent, managing the battery and power supply on my own, and most of all, remaining calm and resilient if things go wrong.
If a sense of adventure is a muscle, then learning new habits to cultivate it is like doing gentle exercises to strengthen that muscle. Small changes can help one cultivate that sense of adventure. And who knows where adventure might lead you.
Getting fitter and stronger
If you are setting out on an adventure, it helps to have a strong body and an open mind.
In my 20s, I used to frequent gyms for strength training and cardio workouts. I was quite strong for my size especially in the lower body and could do 100kg to 120kg leg presses. In my 30s, I focused on post-cancer recovery. In my 40s, when I started strength training again, I often had injuries or swelling post-workout, and gradually stopped out of frustration.
In my 50s, I had more or less given up the thought of strenuous workouts. Surely yoga, swimming and cycling were enough?
Turns out, they are not. As people age into their 50s, they are advised to do strength training. Exercises that make use of your own body weight are good, if your body can manage them, such as doing squats and lunges, or doing the yoga plank positions or push-ups. It’s also advisable to incorporate lifting weights.
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My mental model of my own body has changed in recent years. At the age of 50, a group of my friends and I embarked on a (to me, gruelling) 120km trek over six days in Spain. I still can’t believe I survived, even enjoyed that trek.
Recently, I attended a yoga class where the participants were mostly women who looked to be in their 60s and older, who did their sun salutations and downward facing dogs without adaptations, and slid from one pose to another, holding them with graceful ease. They inspired me to work harder to get fitter and stronger.
So I have decided to resume strength training in my 50s, as part of my journey towards better health and flexibility. I also enjoy physical movement and play. Accepting that I’m not the 20-something gym rat I once was, I’ve shut my ears to the siren call of the cheap 24-hours gym mass memberships.
Instead, I signed up for a programme targeted at the over-50 age group, that is run by a group of trainers who are also physiotherapists, who can adapt the exercises to cater for limited mobility. At the initial assessment, I was shocked that my lower body strength was considered weak for my age group. The idea of signing up for a seniors’ gym programme was a bit galling, but the memory of the muscle sprains and injuries from wrong workouts pushed me to swallow my pride to make a more prudent choice.
Once my body gets to a level of strength, and I get used to the new normal, I told myself, I can “graduate” to general gym programmes.
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Ready to adapt
Rekindling our sense of adventure means learning new habits to be open to change. But it also requires us to be prudent and modify old habits.
Adapting my habits means I no longer need a study or office to write my pieces. I’m writing this from a local library. We headed out to Dunsborough from our coastal campground so I could find a quiet table for a few hours of sustained work, and have a good Internet connection.
I’ve become adept at writing in local libraries, which tend to be community places. A group of moms and dads just finished a joint singalong session, with babes in arms. A knitting group is gathering as I write. I’m at a table with three other digital nomads, each focused on our own work. I’ve learnt to adapt to the surroundings and enjoy them while shutting off the noise. And when I file this story to my editors in Singapore, I’ll be heading back to the camper van to resume our travels.
For years, I tried to live a cocooned life and succeeded to some extent. But cocoons are meant to be temporary abodes, nurseries for seedlings before they are transplanted to mature.
No matter how hard you try to maintain a safe life in a cocoon, life has a habit of throwing you out of your comfort zone – physical or mental illness, accidents, relationship breakdowns, job loss, an unexpected discovery, family upsets. Growth and change are the natural states of development.
In my 50s, I’ve come to realise that the best life is not living in a sheltered cove free from storms. Life has a way of unfolding in unexpected ways beyond our control. An attitude of openness to change helps one cope better with life challenges, while a mindset of gentle curiosity enhances enjoyment.
After all, life is an adventure, and one might as well get used to that idea and enjoy the ride.
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