Jack 85yrs Triathlete
Most of us just don’t want to learn about aging until we are dealing with an age-related problem ourselves. Before that, ignorance isn’t bliss. It’s risk. For example, if we study what makes others successful as they age, we can learn how they do it.
Things like daily doses of humor, exercise and getting rid of unhealthy things in our diet and lifestyles can really help us. As an example, I often think of comedian, writer and actor George Burns, who lived to be 100 and and worked at what he loved until shortly before his death. If you look at his lifestyle, you see all the essentials of successful aging. He was happy in his work. He exercised in his pool daily. He laughed at aging itself as well as his own age-related limitations. He did a lot of things in an ideal way and he reaped the benefits of his choices. He must have educated himself about what to do. We don’t learn this in school unless it is our professional field of study. Healthy aging research is abundant, as lifespans are increasing. Read up, as exemplary seniors can inspire all of us.
Prepare for your own successful aging by taking action. I look at how my own grandmother lived as she aged. She died at 93 after successfully navigating her own aging process for many years. She was widowed and lived alone, but maintained her house as a comfortable place for her children and grandchildren to visit. She had the means, which helps, but it was intentional to create an atmosphere around her where family would want to visit. And they did. Engagement with family and frequent visitors kept her involved in positive things. She read daily and worked crossword puzzles. She followed world politics and world news. She went outside for at least a mile walk every day. She stayed active in her local church, and community organizations for as long as she was able to get out. As she became more frail and developed dementia, she stayed at home with a full time caregiver. Family were around her constantly. She died in her own bed, in the presence of family, probably with no regrets. I always thought she modeled a good way to go out of this life. She taught me that aging is not a passive thing. You need to put energy into it.
If we want aging to be a successful long term proposition for ourselves, we have to look at how it gets to be long term and how we keep our vitality. We can’t expect healthy aging to be merely a matter of luck. At least being informed and inspired by those who manage this phase of life successfully can inspire us to take action in our own lives.
Retirement opens the door to change our focus from our work lives to our opportunity to make aging a positive experience. It will probably involve some limitations from the wear and tear of years of living in our bodies, but that need not stop us from healthy aging. My hope is that with millions of Boomers retiring every year, that our generation will embrace aging as something more than we were before, not something less. Let that be a resolution.
Thanks for listening
Carolyn Rosenblatt & Dr. Mikol Davis
AgingParents.com
