OLD NEED NOT BE UNHAPPY

For years I have been piling up reasons that are good about being old. A recent one added is that old people have a far greater store of happy memories to call on than do younger ones. When you are young, there have to be wonderful days of praise, achievement, accolades, raises, etc. When you are old, every day above ground is a good day.

I've written before on annoyances in later life (see this blog: http://ewelts.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html February 10
Graceful Aging, on 6-23-08: http://ewelts.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html

I have heard it said that people mellow with age. I never understood that statement until recently. As you age, the earliest childhood inputs become as clear as though events just happened. We are more mellow, closer to our parents than we have been for many years. During those years of growing up, we had introjected the parents so that they are now a part of us. Remembering their comfort, support and decision making, we remember the safety and peace they provided for us as children. They live in our heads. We feel calmer and more mellow, or we go into complete separation and denial of the new generation (our grandchildren) and its parents (our adult children).

As with all things, there may be alternative reasons, such as, some people are just too tired to make waves any longer. They look quite calm much of the time. Maybe, though it is rarely admitted by parents, they just don't give a damn! Having spent so many years raising their own difficult, acting out and time-consuming children it gives the older family members joy to see their children finally understanding what their parents went through as they agonizingly wade through the same exhausting process with their own children. Usually that is when they finally come to truly appreciate their parents. Since their own children take the usual 2 or 3 decades to grow up and leave, the pleasure the old folks receive matches the years of servitude to the 'kids'.

What to a younger person may represent being alone and lonely, to the senior it represents a time of peaceful space inside and outside one's head to enjoy Nature, life in general, people, or whatever else we old folk like to take in as our due and our own.

We feel we earned the right to make our own choices, live our lives with abandonment of many of the earlier responsibilities, deadlines, and selflessness that precedes the 'Golden Years'. While the value of Gold as a metal has gone up exponentially, the value of the Golden Years as quickly dipped as far as the current Stock Market. Since we have Google to keep us informed, those younger no longer have to ask old people for advice or opinions. They have little understanding that the old people enjoy watching the young ones make all the same mistakes because they are too steeped in their own importance to ask someone who knows. One of these days I will find the three pages that I have noted and learned about, the good things about being old that I have not written here now. Youth just seems to last three or four times longer, accounting for how tired we all get when old!

AGING WITHOUT GROWING OLD

Longevity depends on so many factors: genetic inheritance, life style, exposure to toxins, accidents, mind set, life stressors, endocrine balance, neurotransmitter balances and many more factors, for which I am using training wheels.

Recently I received a pps presentation in email that made me really try to understand some of the sentimental, pseudo-spiritual stuff with which many of us are gifted.
The following are among some of those 'treasures'.

-"So long as one continues to be amazed, one can delay growing old." It is my sincere hope this writer will never become a researcher. I've missed the connection. One criteria determines growing old? Alzheimer patients are constantly being amazed and lots of them are really old, look old, and act even older.

-"Old age arrives suddenly as does the snow. One morning on awakening one realizes that everything is white." That can only mean the denial finally cracked! Old age is insidious and creeps up gradually. Most people don't have one 'aha' moment but start having them frequently, generally after they realize there are adults younger and more alive than they, and when they have a good mirror.

-"It is by growing old that one learns to remain young." When you grow old you cannot turn back the clock; you will never again be young no matter how much plastic surgery, hair transplants, tummy tucks, or other attempts to recreate what was once there. It ignores that some human functions are ageless, like a mind that imitates the Energizer Bunny and just keeps on going.

-"Old age embellishes everything. It has the effect of the setting sun on the beautiful twilights of Autumn." Wrinkles, poor vision and hearing, medical problems, incontinence, dentures, and all the accouterments of seniors can be considered embellishment by some, but most would call them something more parasitic.

-"As one grows old one generally rids himself of his shortcomings because they no longer serve a useful purpose." This is the first I have heard that shortcomings serve a purpose and are not just liabilities and a disappointment, annoyance or just plain PITA to those around them.

-"The person who considers himself too old to learn something has probably always been that way." This one almost made a bit of sense. Of course it doesn't consider that some people just stop caring about some things. However, the saying holds true if it means that a person who is alive will always be wanting to add more knowledge to their already slowed down mental CPU and almost full-to-capacity drive in their cranium.

I'd rather be able to say, "Growing old is what I do best. Nothing but death can stop me, While I am doing it, I am learning, having fun, and enjoying the process most of the time. I love that some people tell me I neither look nor act my age, except my brother who tells me I look like an old hag. I hate that younger people talk about me, in my presence, with things like, "Isn't she cute?" It makes me want to say, "Would someone bring me a dry Depends?" Then I will start boring them (or shocking them) with tales of my youth and tell them they are too young to understand.