Adventure Time

Do you ever just feel old? Here is a post from Lou Tice at the Winners Circle that encourages us to think a little differently about getting older, think in a much more positive manner than perhaps we do now — certainly more positively than society generally does.

Do you think of old age as a time of adventure, self-expression and possibility? My guess is probably not. It’s hard to think of the later portion of life this way, when the society we live in doesn’t seem to agree.

We sure don’t see many role models of lively, intelligent old people in the media, and our culture continues to be dominated by images of youth. Ask anyone in advertising or marketing, and they will tell you the demographics they covet are 18-25 year olds.

The fact is that life expectancy is up from age 45 in 1900, to 80 for women and 74 for men in 2000. This means that things are changing. Of course, there is still the likelihood of some physical decline as we age, but many older people are discovering that their mental health is more important to them. They tend to shrug off their aches and pains and concentrate instead on growth and development in other areas.

They become much more spiritually aware and keenly interested in things outside of themselves. Some go back to school, others become involved in a community or family project. They don’t see the changes happening all around them as threatening. Rather, they respond to change with flexibility, a sense of purpose, and lots of patience with themselves. They want to control their own lives, make their own choices, and stay involved with meaningful activities long after they “retire.”

This sounds like a good way to live at any age, and it sounds like just the right kind of role model we need – because, we are all going to get old, if we are lucky!

Lou Tice
The Pacific Institute

Once again Lou Tice has set my grey-matter going a bit. Because of my ongoing health problems, I do, quite often feel older than I actually am — I just feel physically worn out. But until very recently, I felt much the same way mentally too.

I mentioned in another post about the choice I’ve had to make with regards my medication — a choice between more, and less well controlled, pain or impaired mental faculties, and I’m choosing to accept the pain. Well, the pain levels have changed as expected. But the mental faculties have improved enormously, more than expected. I thought it was just my memory giving me problems because of these tablets, but it seems they were effecting more than that.

So now, I’m much more in the position Lou talks about in his penultimate paragraph than I expected to be. And I’m beginning to think differently about things again. I may not get the memories back that have been lost, but, perhaps, now I’ll be able to make some new ones. Lou Tice, in this post, has helped me clarify that thinking, at least in my own mind: as his posts so often do. If you think you would benefit from more of them, do please consider subscribing to the daily emails yourself, it doesn’t cost anything.