View Full Version : I am so not gonna get old
I overheard a young lady at work today say, "I am so not gonna get old". The other retorted that she had some eye cream that helps. I felt momentarily ancient but laughed to myself just wondering how they intend to accomplish this feat:).
Ain't gonna happen - I say this as a 60 year old. I say embrace your age and be thankful for every day.
BTW - I think being old is a state of mind. I know some people that feel old at 50! I think a lot of it has to do with health.
Peace
I'm 61 and don't like getting "old", but it sure beats dying young!
loosechickens
8-17-11, 5:18pm
My 91 year old mother, (may she rest in peace....she's gone now) had a sweatshirt I bought her, with a picture of a tombstone and daisies, and the legend....."Better to be Over the Hill than Under it". She loved it, everybody who saw her wearing it loved it, and her doctor took her picture to illustrate a talk he was giving on "attitudes toward life in the elderly" at a conference.
When we're young, we think there is nothing worse than the physical signs of age, and we dread the beginnings of every line and wrinkle......when we're old, we're often just glad that we're not so young and shallow as we were when we were young......
It's great to take care of your health and fitness, so that you can look good at any age, but useless to try to keep time from imprinting your countenance. And some, those that seem to work the hardest to keep the "old" at bay, often end up looking like, again as my mother and grandmother used to put it...."mutton dressed up as lamb".
Time levels us all.....IF we're lucky enough to grow old. So many never have that opportunity.
Mom's been celebrating her 29th birthday for years now. I'm about to catch up! She blows bubbles, colors with crayons, plays outside... and not just when my niece visits. She likes petting zoos and long walks. She just plain doesn't care what anyone else thinks she ought to be. And she's my hero. I hope I age like her... body only!
iris lily
8-18-11, 10:27am
agreed, that's a great summary, loosechickens! I like that idea about shallowness. The youngsters do know, instinctively, that we oldsters know some stuff and they ARE attracted to our lack of shallowness even if they get impatient with our outlook on life otherwise.
I have a friend exactly my age who constantly moans about getting "fat" (not) and sagging and the rest of it. A gay man. And jeez, he looks like a million dollars and he doesn't even have health problems, well, other than the usual little things that we have in our 50's. His constant complaints makes me tired, I just want to shake him and say: You are healthy! Shut the F up! Just wait until it get bad physically, you are not even REMOTELY there!
I am so happy to be healthy.
Sounds like he's rehearsing for his "organ recital" years. http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-sick014.gif (http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys.php)
My stepmother just died at 68 and for ten years she's looked, acted, and sounded like she's 80.
I have a girlfriend who's 68 and still runs (albeit slowly) half-marathons.
Guess which one's my role model? Love the story about your mom, Anda :) She sounds like SARK http://www.planetsark.com/
loosechickens
8-18-11, 2:48pm
yeah.....we know a few people like that, Iris Lily......send him off to volunteer at a hospital or something. Nothing like immersing yourself into all the things that COULD be happening to ya to make you thankful for what you've got, for sure. Folks like that sometimes need a dose of that reality.
"You are so gonna die young?!?"
ApatheticNoMore
8-18-11, 4:19pm
These is some connection between how one looks as one ages and diet etc.. But there is probably a great deal of false promise out there about how much a healthy lifestyle can prevent looking older. So that even looking older when one IS well older, is one's own fault :~) Not that a healthy lifestyle is not worth maintaining for other reasons: weight maintenance (even if you never attain thinness at least in comparison to what you would weigh being a junk food junky), greater psychological well that comes from eating real food, lower chances of developing chronic diseases. That's enough, isn't it?
There's false promises about how much we can control how we age period. Yes of course things like diet and exercise effect ones aging process. But then you learn that things like the age of the mother when she had you can also effect how long you will live. But my mother HAD to be that age to conceive ME, because only once did that particular egg and sperm that became ME get released. So much is fate. >8)
yeah.....we know a few people like that, Iris Lily......send him off to volunteer at a hospital or something. Nothing like immersing yourself into all the things that COULD be happening to ya to make you thankful for what you've got, for sure. Folks like that sometimes need a dose of that reality.
ha ha ah my friend DOES work at a hospital, a children's hospital. It hasn't helped him! Seeing sick and dying kids every day hasn't shown him it's great to be alive--nope! It's all about his hair, his girth, his this, his that. What annoys me is that he is not a shallow person, he's smart and capable, I love him. It's just a nervous habit, this constant complaining.
loosechickens
8-18-11, 10:45pm
well, maybe it's just his way of distancing himself from the stuff he has to see every day, Iris Lily....who knows? Or, the habit of self absorption is just too strong.......guess you can just focus on his good qualities......
Mom's been celebrating her 29th birthday for years now. I'm about to catch up! She blows bubbles, colors with crayons, plays outside... and not just when my niece visits. She likes petting zoos and long walks. She just plain doesn't care what anyone else thinks she ought to be. And she's my hero. I hope I age like her... body only!
Love your post!!! I just retired and am slowly learning not to care so much what other people think. I mostly worked in highly politicized organizations where a misinterpreted word or gesture or false gossip could damage a person's career permanently. It's now rather difficult to quit looking over my shoulder and imagining what others will think if I do such-and-such.
Right now I'm feeling guilty for being up so late, never mind I'm coming down from taking an anti-depressant that proved to be too strong once I was out from under all the work stress. Never mind that I have no commitments tomorrow and my lovely cat, Rosie, has a big bowl full of her favorite dry food and a fresh bowl of water.
Thanks to your post, I'm also feeling tempted to go to the 24/7 Walmart and buy a big box of Crayolas, wearing my genuine Disney Cheshire Cat pajamas, never minding that I might wake up a neighbor.
Thanks for the therapy session!!! :+1:
Enough people I grew up with are dead or became disabled before reaching my age (early 50s) to make me value the fact that I'm still able to be physically active with only minor annoyances.
LOL Jemima! You go girl! :cool:
loosechickens
9-25-11, 1:21am
".......I'm also feeling tempted to go to the 24/7 Walmart and buy a big box of Crayolas, wearing my genuine Disney Cheshire Cat pajamas, never minding that I might wake up a neighbor." (Jemima)
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We hope that if you and your cute, genuine Disney Cheshire Cat pjs show up on www.peopleofwalmart.com , you alert us and/or post the pics....... ;-)
for me, it's really about being able to be vital as i age, such that i can die while truly living.
i actively work to keep my body and mind fit and in good condition, so that as I get older, i won't have to worry about loosing body and mind. It may be that an accident or something unforeseen happens -- and should I live, i would no doubt be grateful for my life -- but i do believe that we should do what we can do to be vital as we age.
i'm not concerned about aging per se, at least, externally. i am concerned about body functioning and overall health as I age.
and something that i think is really cool about the human body -- it's never too late to get well. I've seen seniors go from not very physically capable to winning their weight/age class in weight lifting competitions, living more than many people younger than them.
And to a one, the most vital seniors have lots of things in common:
1. positive outlook on life;
2. community connections;
3. some sort of work that they enjoy (volunteer or paid or both).
all of these things tend to keep them going -- body, mind, and spirit -- and thus they live longer and better than their peers who do not have all three of these things.
Great article connected to this topic from the yesterday's NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/sports/24iht-athlete24.html
The best quote...“If you are old mentally, you are old physically. Automatically.”
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