Thoughts on growing older…
On my way to visit my grandmother in her Florida neighborhood, which is populated entirely by retirees, I finished reading this faboo book by Gloria Steinem. In one section of the book she reflects on growing older and being in her 60s. She makes all these great points about how we treat older people and don’t give them their proper place in society. We mock them for talking too much about their ailments but don’t critique the young snowboarder for talking about his broken leg.
When people – a lot of them women, honestly – do things like lie about their age and alter their appearance to try and appear “younger,” we are doing nothing but discrediting ourselves and the value of our real age. Just because your body ages does not mean your life ends. (Well, I guess eventually it does.)
It just got me thinking in this totally positive way about aging. And to go from those thoughts to being immersed in older-people-central (a.k.a. Florida) I got to see folks really challenging the stereotypes of aging. An older woman getting set to join the Peace Corps in Africa… An older man doing ultra marathons – he’s running a 50k this weekend…
Aging doesn’t have to be bad. We make it bad when we don’t give it it’s due, don’t talk about it and don’t celebrate it.
