Growing Old Gracefully: Reflections on Embracing Aging with Wisdom and Humor
As someone who has been growing older for a lifetime, I consider myself an expert on aging, not because I have it all figured out, but because I’ve been at it for so long.
Experience must count for something. However, I’m not entirely sure what it is I’ve learned.
From a young age, I wanted to be older, to be granted the privileges and freedoms that came with age.
“When you’re older,” my parents would say when I wanted to go to the movies alone or accept a date from an admiring boy.
Even at eighteen, when I sought to celebrate my sister’s wedding with a glass of wine, I was offered a mere sip of champagne – not quite what I had in mind.
It seemed I was never quite “old enough.”
Now, here I am in my late seventies, wanting to write about growing old, and I can hear that inner voice saying, “You’re not old enough yet.”
Well, I better get old enough soon, or I might forget what I wanted to say about aging, or lose the ability to type it out.
So, I’ve decided to begin writing about what I feel about aging, even though I’m apparently “not old enough.”
Forgive me if I say things that are proven untrue in ten more years. I shall reflect only what I know from personal experience.
Aging happens whether I want it to or not.
When I was fifteen, I desperately wanted to turn sixteen, thinking that magical year would never arrive. But the candles grew from sixteen to seventeen while I wasn’t even looking.
One of the things I seldom did over the years was make a big deal about my birthday, as I would have been just as happy to go to bed at sixteen and wake up at twenty-one.
In fact, that’s precisely the speed at which I went to bed at sixty and woke up at seventy.
So, my first piece of advice, if you’re one of those who worries about aging, is to avoid going to bed at all.
Unfortunately, that won’t help much, but you’ll be too exhausted to notice.
One of the biggest dangers of growing older is exhaustion, whether from doing too much or not sleeping enough.
Where is the happy medium?
I’m not talking about an average amount of time in bed. I’m talking about a “Happy Medium” – a mythical little creature that comes into life to keep the laughter rolling.
I first met a Happy Medium when I retired, not because of age, but due to illness.
My days stretched out ahead of me with no end.
Then I heard a song being whistled as I was doing the dishes, and lo and behold, the whistling was coming from my lips.
I had never experienced anything quite like this before. The tune was immaterial, but the feeling of melody permeated my whole body as I moved about with everyday chores.
I’ve been whistling ever since, but today I know it’s not me – it’s my Happy Medium.
Shifting out of middle age
There is a major shift that happens around the age of sixty. Researchers tell us that middle age is the age of acquisitions.
From thirty to sixty, we buy houses and furnish them, acquire more clothes than we need, and focus on getting just the right car.
My particular focus was on finding the perfect bookcase for all the books I acquired.
And then, this year, I stood looking at all the “stuff” I had and realized it was vanity.
All is vanity.
Downsizing can come in two ways when we age.
It can come intentionally and bit by bit, or it can happen suddenly because life moves us into institutional living or the grave.
I believe the last third of life, sixty to ninety (if we’re that lucky), is a time for letting go and focusing on what is truly meaningful.
I don’t care if I never get another book, teapot, or trinket, but I do care about hearing important words like “I love you.”
I think about legacy – what am I going to leave that will make a difference in others’ lives? It won’t be a piece of furniture, a glass vase, or even a bookcase full of books.
Leaving a Legacy
The only thing that will be left as I age, shrink, and eventually die is my story.
Who I am and what I have done. How I feel and what is important to me. Story is the essence of my life.
It is what will be told at my funeral. It is what will be written in my obituary.
But those will only be highlights. They are not “ME” – my spirit, my values, my dreams, and visions.
You know, as I’ve been writing all this pontification about growing old, I can’t help but chuckle a bit.
Here I am, supposedly an “expert” having lived all these years, and yet I still feel like that seven-year-old wanting to do what the big kids are doing. I guess some things never change!
The more years go by, the more I realize that growing old gracefully isn’t about having it all figured out.
It’s about keeping that youthful spirit alive – that spark of curiosity, that willingness to be a lifelong learner on this aging adventure.
So I may be “old” in years, but in my heart, I’m still just a kid whistling as I go about my chores, keeping an eye out for my own personal Happy Medium to show up with more laughter and wisdom to share.
Who knows, maybe soon I’ll be “old enough” to write a book about the joy of aging.
Do you know where your Happy Medium is?
Join this group of happy readers of The Reflective Pen
and perhaps you will find yourself whistling too!
