I’M GRATEFUL FOR 50 YEARS OF FREEDOM

ForMEr editor Jo Foley, 71, is a specialist travel and wellness writer. Divorced, she lives in London with her cat, Maud.

HOW did I get here from there? To the life I live now — alone but not lonely, childless but surrounded by friends, some a third of my age — 71 on the outside, much less on the inside.

I’m still working and travelling and shouting at people in the street who annoy me. How did it happen that in one generation my life should be so different from that of my forebears? It happened because of choice.

Choice on what to do, where to go, how to live, who to see and most important, the confidence to take a chance and see what freeing ourselves from society’s restrictions does for us.

In the world in which my mother grew up, life was predictable and hidebound — such women lived at home with their families until marriage, after which they mostly remained in the same place, the same town, village or neighbourhood. It never occurred to them that they could be responsible for their own life.

But how our baby boomer generation made up for it! Sure it was scary and we did stupid things, but we mostly survived unscathed. We learned how to live in strange towns and cities at college or university.

At night we plotted escape routes to the sun, where we could find badly-paid jobs in beach bars or child- minding for careless couples with predatory dads, but we learned how to get from A to B. We still carried fear with us, but when the chips were down, and boy were they sometimes down, we scraped out of it.

Looking back from half a century later we realise it prepared us for the lives we live now. We learned self- sufficiency, resourcefulness, confidence and a dollop of selfishness — our own homes, our own friends and plans.

In our 70s we shop at Zara, drink pisco sours, take slow boats along the Mekong and talk to ourselves without contradiction. Did we ever think to thank our parents?