GRACEFUL AGING

There has been little I have found useful that has been written about aging. It is a process that starts at very different chronological times for each of us. Just as 'Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder', so is 'Age reflects how you think and behave.' This said, let me explain what I meant by graceful aging in the title.

Years ago when mini skirts first came out, they looked wonderful on young women with slender bodies. Often, their middle aged mothers who refused to see themselves as pudgy, began to wear them and looked grotesque. Middle aged men began to wear dungarees but did not fill them as fetchingly as slim, athletic, young men.

While we have Senior Olympics and sports, there are too many who try to keep up with all the physical activities of their youth, with frustration their reward. Recently, speaking with a friend whom I have regarded as a Renaissance Man, he told me what he has added to the list of hobby equipment of which he has divested himself. He sold his grand piano when arthritis in his hands made it impossible to play as he wished any longer. However, he has an electronic piano connected to his computer where he can still compose and play. He has rid himself of all his woodworking equipment and wood but had kept his frame making miter as he now does more oil painting. He used to have metal lathes and other tools for his clock repairing. When he developed enough of a tremor to make the results less than his standard, he sold all that, too. While his driving has become limited to necessity shopping and hospital trips and he can no longer climb the stairs easily to get to the jazz venues he loved so much, he contents himself with recordings.

Graceful aging is the ability to live in the reality of one's physical and mental capacities. No chronology can be put on this since it varies so much for everyone. Thus, graceful aging centers on one's ability to adapt to their own reality. Our human ability to sublimate was a gift of Nature to allow us to adapt. We read about the adventures of those with youth and strength. The Internet has given us the ability to travel anywhere in the world without leaving our homes. We can see great paintings and inside many museums; statues and wonders of the world and there for us to view; learn about other cultures, news of the world; and we can vicariously ski board down steep peaks via YouTube. We can catapult, or hear about our politics from people unafraid of telling it like it is. We can even see places that we wouldn't personally want to go to. How wonderful it is to live in this period of time and place when we do not have to go out alone to freeze on an ice float when we can no longer prevent being a burden to our family. Those of us lucky enough to have loving families who help allow us to stay as independent for as long as possible, make some of those difficult years of raising them less painful in retrospect. But, while we no longer need offspring to carry on the farm or business, we were setting up systems to care for our elderly until our current Administration decided elder care need not take precedence over greed, thus the rebuilding of Iraq is more important than a domestic budget to offer medical care to all and the ability to grow old gracefully rather than disgracefully.