Life Lessons Learned Cruising With Senior Citizens

Cruising with seniors can be a great (and educational!) experience. (Photo: Thinkstock)

Last month I spent a week on a Uniworld river cruise up the Rhone. To answer your question: Yes, it was delightful as it sounds. But not simply because the service was so great, or that I ate well three times a day, or that I got to go on a three-hour solo bike ride through the French countryside, or even because I spent one morning touring the vineyards where some of France’s best Cote du Rhone wine originates from. One of the reasons I had such an enjoyable time is because of the crowd I was sailing with. River Cruising tends to attract an older bunch—though I would encourage anyone seeking a civilized vacation to look into it—and it turned out to be one of the best things about my trip.

What will really stick with me from that trip are the life lessons I picked up during my many shared dinners. Here are the ones I’ve been repeating non-stop since my return:

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Fear of flying is a waste of energy.

Life is too short to spend your time and energy worrying about flying. (Photo: Sean Locke/Stocksy)

I am scared of flying (unless I’m flying business class, naturally). No matter what mind games I play with myself I can’t shake the deep and total anxiety brought on by boarding a plane. So you can imagine I had some questions for the 80-year-old gentleman, whose family I ate more than a few meals with, after he mentioned he’d been a paratrooper in Korea in the fifties. He told me he had opted to take the assignment because “it paid an extra $50 a week.” “You must not mind flying,” I remarked, thinking of the harrowing (there had been zero turbulence) transatlantic flight I had just taken to get reach the ship, which was docked in Avignon. “Nah,” he said, “I don’t think twice about it. The first 33 times I went up in a plane, I came down, but not with the plane.”

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How to politely brush off companions.

So long. Farewell. Auf Wiedersehen. Goodbye. (Photo: Alexey Kuzma/Stocksy)

You’ve all been there. You’re on a lovely trip and suddenly polite conversation with a stranger or co-traveller turns into a permanent addition to your day. How to solve this perennial problem short of being rude? I will tell you! On our stop in Avignon I happened to leave the ship to walk into town at the same time as an older lady. As we disembarked, crossed the busy roadway, and made our way through the stone walls of the old city, we chatted politely about the cruise. Just as we entered the city proper and I was frantically trying to think of an acceptable excuse to head off on my own, worried we’d now be paired together for the rest of the day, she turned to me and said “well you’re probably going your way, and I’m going mine. Have a good day.” So simple and yet so polite. So direct and yet so not rude. Brilliant.

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Love early and late.

Love can come at any time and you should fill your life with as much love and laughter as possible. (Photo: Rob & Julia Campbell/Stocksy)

One night at dinner I was seated between two couples who weren’t traveling together, but had been seated at the same group of tables and invited me to join them. The couple on my left had met as children in Afghanistan more than forty years ago. They had continued a clandestine relationship into their teens (clandestine simply because young people of the opposite sex were not allowed to even converse) and even managed to stay in touch when he was temporarily jailed during college for participating in protests. How? He wrote her notes on toilet paper and stuffed it into his pockets where his mother would retrieve them when she came to pick up his laundry. After her family immigrated to Germany in the late seventies they lost touch. A few years later, shortly after he was released from jail, he traveled to visit family in Germany. Upon disembarking the place the very first person he ran into at the airport was her cousin. Inquiring after her whereabouts he quickly traveled to meet her. Two years later they were married and living in California where they have since raised their own family.

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To my right, were two women who were celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary and their 65th birthdays. They had met on match.com, they told us, and married a year later to the day. Both had had long previous marriages to men: one woman had lost her husband a decade earlier, the other had divorced; at their wedding her ex-husband walked her down the aisle. Life is long and love is a many-splendored thing.

Here’s the secret to a 55 year marriage.

The couple that laughs together, stays together. (Photo: Getty Images)

I was lucky enough to share a few dinners with a couple who was celebrating their 55th wedding anniversary. They had met on a date, become engaged three months later, and were married six months after that. Naturally I asked them what their secret was: “A sense of humor.”

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Growing old does not mean slowing down.

Getting older does not mean getting any less awesome. (Photo: Getty Images)

This was my general takeaway from the trip. So often it seems we are conditioned to believe life, or at least the part of life worth being interested in, ends at 65. However traveling with a ship full of active people whose average age was 60-something made me rethink the golden years as a time of life that could actually be pretty golden, not to mention, fun, chic, and bloody interesting.

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