It seems that lately society has taken the attitude that we should chronicle the progressive deterioration of our older citizens.
Why is it that we do this instead of examining aging thoroughly, vigorously, and with the same imagination used to scrutinize our youth and young adults?
Young people are often portrayed as more attractive, more glamorous, more…whatever. But, are they?
Let me tell you – my wife is in her early 60’s and she is attractive, glamorous and certainly more interesting than most young people I can think of. And , she is more the norm than the exception. She will, however, make me sleep on the couch for the next twelve years if I tell her actual age, so I won’t be doing that in this public forum.
Yes, there are some people my age – 55 – who I would rather talk to a dead stump than try to engage in a conversation with, meaningful or otherwise. But for the most part I find that people who have thrown down a few decades of experiences have something to add to my knowledge bucket, and I can return that favor.
Lets get real here. It took a lot more than talent, dogged perseverance, and sheer blind luck for us to get to this point. There was some building on the education we were given, but, aside from that, there was the understanding that we were expected to succeed. To fulfill that expectation, we had to put all our talents, skills, knowledge and determination together and make something of ourselves.
Well, we did! We are now looking around and asking “We got here, now what do we do?”
I read somewhere recently that part of aging well was eating all the correct foods, taking the correct vitamins and supplements, and going to the doctor regularly, and so forth. Only as a meager little note at the bottom of the article did the idea of attitude come up.
You gotta be kidding!
Attitude is what makes or breaks anything, and that goes triple for getting a few decades under your belt.
Some of us took Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer to heart and understood that there are some things we could change and to accept with serenity the things we cannot. Pick your battles, if you will. Some didn’t quite get that, and developed resentments instead of allowing forgiveness to replace some of those old hurts and letdowns. Forgiveness that would have led to successfully aging and enjoying the wonderful years ahead by understanding how to have fun and enjoy life.
Simply put: if you have a sour attitude, you aren’t going to enjoy your senior years. If you go through life trying to get the “Attitudie-Judy” or Attitudie-Rudy” awards, just how much are you really going to enjoy these years?
I remember having a middle-school teacher who liked to tell her students that we needed to up our attitudes sometimes. There are some of us who need to take a look around at all there is out there in life, up their attitudes, reach out for that brass ring, and truly enjoy life.
Do you know which is a better predictor of a positive aging experience at 80 – low cholesterol or a good marriage at age 50? A good marriage.
Yes, it’s a good thing to take care of your physical well-being, but it’s been proven over and over – your mental health, your positive attitude, and your good humor are actually more important. How many times have you met someone who begins dwelling on how badly they feel and before long they have talked themselves into a bout of bad health?
Take a minute to think of just how good it feels to be alive, to be able to enjoy life and look forward to each new day and all the opportunities it has to offer. This is no time to dwell on the past. Just smile and say, “Look out world, I’ve upped my attitude! Now up yours!”
