COLIN CAMPBELL: A 50-year friend’s firm resolution: Do it while you can
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A FRIEND of mine who I started working with in newspapers in 1975 made his New Year resolution and has now implemented it. He is heading off for a six-week trip and adventure to North Africa.
His resolute pledge for 2024 is: “Do it while you can.”
Conjuring up commitments for the year ahead is a tradition I tend to ignore, but my pal’s expression of intent strikes me as being timely and relevant. And he has, literally, got off to flying start.
Although I can ride a bike up a hill faster than he can, his endurance for cutting high hedges and doing gardening chores which require a different set of muscles leave me as a wilting violet. So our fitness levels in our late 60s may be more or less the same.
He has been spared any health drawbacks. He has no “underlying conditions”, so compared with many people of our age he’s fortunate, as I remind him. This makes it easier for him to head off on his travels with confidence and leave the Scottish winter behind.
Health insurance charges for travel are likely to be much higher if you are older and have high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes or anything else needing ongoing medical treatment. And insurance companies may not be at all obliging when it comes to paying out for hospital treatment costs incurred in an emergency abroad. A skim through some of the blocking tactics detailed on consumer sites like Trustpilot makes for alarming reading.
Within most of Europe, UK citizens with a government health card are guaranteed free treatment. Outside Europe, obviously they are not. Of course most people will have trouble free journeys. But if something does go wrong, and you have underlying conditions, it would be prudent at the least to ensure an insurance form is watertight. So for me no more scooping up the cheapest deal and filling in details without much thought – which is one resolution I definitely intend to stick to.
Almost 50 years after starting together on that local paper – a leap ahead which would have seemed too bizarrely distant to contemplate back then – our focus is mainly on travel. Other people will have different lingering ambitions and boxes which remain unticked.
But we are agreed that the older you get, the easier it is to remain sunk into your comfort zone. A few years ago we’d have regarded a comfort zone as a rut.
My mother lived to 90, as did my friend’s mum, so we may have years ahead of us yet. But we’re not counting on it. You never know what lurks around the corner at any age but at our age, unfortunately, the chances of it being something that’ll seriously clip your heels increase significantly.
My friend is enjoying his robust good health at a fairly advanced age, and is determined to make the most of it in 2024, as will many of us.
I look forward to receiving a postcard from Casablanca. And underneath a scrawl about his hot and colourful surroundings, which may well arrive when it’s below freezing here, I’d expect him to print out in clear letters his New Year resolution and primary motivation for the year ahead. It’s time to shake off the shackles of dithering and procrastination.
“Do it while you can.”
