Life begins at 50

In youth, we anticipate aging with some degree of horror. We dread the thought of becoming wrinkled, with aching joints. We fear that we will lose our mental faculties as we grow old. If we are vain about physical beauty, we associate the outward physical signs of aging with ugliness. Some young people have disdain for senior citizens, and they mock people whose faces are outward evidence of the years they have accumulated. Those short sighted youngsters do not realize that if they play their cards right, or if they are lucky, they too shall someday become elderly. The vicissitudes of life will catch up with them.

"Time wounds all heels."

The truth is that life begins at 50. As we age, we grow in experience and knowledge. We learn how to feel more content and happier. We leave aside things that are not really important at all. As we age, we find our authentic selves.

"Don’t trust anyone over 30." - Jack Weinberg

When I was 18, I feared turning 30. I thought that as a woman, I would be over the hill and irrelevant at 30 and over. Yet, when 30 came, the greatest adventure of my life, parenthood, had begun. Those years were often very hard, with not enough money and not enough energy, but I now cherish my memories of that period with my family.

1 Corinthians 13:11
"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."

Perhaps, when you were a very young child, some adult told you that you didn't know how lucky you were to be a child. Yet, you probably find the freedom and self-determination that you have as an adult, to be far preferable to the condition of being a child who is under the control of adults. If you are a young adult now, you might not realize just how much freedom you actually have, because you feel obligated to do as your elders want you to do. You might have committed prematurely to marriage and/or parenthood, and so you are putting the needs of your children ahead of your own desires. Your time will come though, when your children grow up and go out on their own.

My own father, in his final years, would sometimes say to me, "Don't ever get old." I would answer, "It is better than the alternative," to which he would say, "I'm not so sure about that." However, at that point in his life, my father was over the age of 90 and was in constant pain from osteoarthritis. He had earned the right to complain.

The face of old age is changing. People are healthier for a much longer part of their adult years than their parents, and by the time the children of today are in their golden years, old age as we know it now will no longer exist. Fortunately, there are simple things we can do now to extend not only our lives, but our quality of life. I believe the most important thing is to remain physically active. You don't have to become an ultramarathoner, though. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "For substantial health benefits, adults should do at least 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) a week of moderate-intensity, or 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic activity."

Try to keep your use of prescription drugs as minimal as possible, if there are non-pharmaceutical solutions that will work as well or better for your ailments. Moderate exercise, rest, and good eating habits may make it possible to stop taking blood pressure and pain medications. For many years, I suffered from pain in my right hip, which doctors attributed to osteoarthritis. Then I learned about the psoas muscle, and how it can cause pain and the feeling of having a shorter leg, when the psoas tightens. Just a few sessions of stretching my psoas muscles cured my hip pain! Of course, you should not make any changes to your medications or exercise routine, etc., without first consulting your doctor.

Developing the "habit of feeling pleased" will be good for your mental health, as well as making you someone whom your family members and friends will want to spend time with. (I became acquainted with this concept from reading an Ann Landers column, decades ago.) Do your companions have to listen to you complain a lot, or are there a variety of topics that you enjoy discussing, especially with regard to literature and the arts? I suggest keeping political topics to a minimum, because those are divisive, likely to make you feel angry, and -- let's face it -- there isn't much you can do about those anyhow. (Recommended: "Politics is a Scam - Why I Will Never Vote again," by James Altucher.)

Exchange vanity for being caring, pleasant to be with, and interesting. Being beautiful is very important to some people, and it is easy to see who those people are. They tend to post hundreds of selfies on social media. In my experience, those people are rarely very interesting to spend time with. While some degree of caring about your appearance is a sign of mental health, being obsessed with it is nothing more than sheer narcissism. How you treat other people (including children) and animals, and your activities, are far more important than physical beauty.

"This is what 40 looks like." -- Gloria Steinem

I like how Gloria Steinem has helped to redefine our society's notions of what it is to be a senior citizen. Interviewed when she turned 80,, Steinem said, "Fifty was a shock, because it was the end of the center period of life. But once I got over that, 60 was great. Seventy was great. And I loved, I seriously loved aging. I found myself thinking things like: 'I don’t want anything I don’t have.' How great is that?"

Some time ago, when I was feeling worn out, a good friend pointed to his grandmother, who was in her 80's at the time. "Age is relative," he said. "Compared to Grandma," you're still young." My friend's grandmother lived independently and enjoyed life until she died after a short, final senescence at the age of 98. That was pretty good for someone who was born in 1906.

In the society described in novel, "Lord Valentine's Castle," by Robert Silverberg, the Coronal is a prince who governs until such time as he is promoted to Pontifex, after which he must go live underground to attend to bureaucratic processes. The Coronal has some dread of becoming Pontifex, but in time, he comes to accept it. I don't know if the author intended it this way, but I see that as a metaphor for the phases of life.

Aging gives you super powers, sort of. I have a mental collection of facts and trivia from books, newspapers, magazines, movies, and television with which many younger people are unfamiliar. Therefore, I can amaze other people in conversations about "50 Shades of Grey," by mentioning how vastly superior and more artistic was the novella, "9^1/2 Weeks," and how even "Naked Came the Stranger," which was deliberately written badly, was a much better book. Something that makes me sad is when I remember the plot of a story that I read, but not the title or the author, so I can't go look it up again.

A few minutes before I clicked the submit button for this post, I called to make an appointment with my optometrist, and was told that he has retired. Time marches on.