How Come Aging Sucks?
This article explores a few characteristics of aging by allowing you to understand the effect of your attitudes, language, beliefs, and behaviors on this topic. The author shares his personal experience and what he has come to learn over the years.
How much time do you spend?
Intention
The title “How Come Aging Sucks?” may have gotten you here out of curiosity. We are however, not going to explore how you look with ways to stay young (i.e. wrinkles will come along the way), or how much money you can save for retirement: none of those…
This article contains some ideas about staying youthful. One must understand that your attitude, beliefs, actions, and language affect how you go about living. Our intention is to provide some different perspectives, which we think will make you stop for a few moments and consider what’s occurring for you today.
Image Background
This aging concern image we selected is typical for girls, women, and men; each spends a considerable amount of time with their looks. One need only look at the spending for cosmetics ($8B-2017) and related surgeries ($16B-2017) in the United States alone to understand how prevalent this is today. For some people, looking young is paramount to feeling good about one’s self. If you include clothing, hair color products, etc., the spending on cosmetics and surgery mentioned already, pales in comparison.
From our stance, we aren’t focusing on how one looks but rather what makes up the person: the exterior is only a very small portion of what constitutes the individual.
This particular article will the lay the foundation of some of the components which contribute to the person.
(Special Note) We do not approach the psychological or physiological aspects of a person. Brain science and other neurological discoveries are proving especially important in understanding how a person thinks and acts, along with what helps produce motivation for them.
We approach this staying youthful issue from the point of being able to define beliefs, thinking, acting purposefully and using language that represents those things we can affect.
My Personal Experience
I turned 70 in February this year and I still feel like I’m 45. Some people say I look like I’m still in my 50s. Let me tell you the old wives’ tale about “You are as old as you feel” makes me want to get sick, and I speak with some experience. Over the last five years, I’ve been on the brink of death (i.e. see Handling Illness). But, thanks in large part to medical science and great doctors, I’m still here.
There are two things that keep me going; I love life and I have beliefs centering on God, continuous learning, participating, contributing, and being happy. For me life is family, friends, loved ones, and a changing mixture of attitude, doing, and language. Much of the time all of these things are positive, but sometimes they’re not. My belief has me focused on my faith, things happening in the day, how I can be helpful to someone, and using language which keeps me youthful. Yes, my doing has me building things, exercising, eating the best I can (most of the time), getting lots of rest and having fun.
Old Before Your time
Yet, I’ve noticed in some friends younger and older than me, continue to use the language of their parents or grandparents. I find this language is riddled with comments about how bad the aging process has been for them, and tired excuses like “I’m too old for this”, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, and “I’m just getting old”. And the rest of their language sounds like 50’s speak – see 1950s slang or the 1960’s. BTW, I like the fact that my father’s favorite swear word was “clown”.
No Disparaging of Illness
However, let me qualify that aging is ripe with Alzheimer’s and senility for some people and also difficult for their friends, family, and of course themselves. My father died at age 89 of senility, so I have a pretty good understanding of what occurs, including the effects on people around them. My comments above are not about people with disabilities or life-threatening situations, but about your average person, regardless of their age, who are not affected by these disabling and difficult conditions.
An Argument to Consider
Let me posit that the choices you make, what attitude you operate under, the beliefs that you have taken on and created for yourself, the way you go about doing things and the language you choose to use, sets the pace of your life and who you are.
Ok, so why is any of this important to you?
For those of you who are aging-this is everyone-life doesn’t have to suck at all. Think for a moment about your life and the things in it. Think about what you are grateful for, how does the gratitude drive you and what’s next in your world? Tough questions you may say. Not really.
I’m not talking about determining the top 5 to 10 things that make up your world – I don’t know about you but I’m so tired of this type of marketing hook in titles – I’ve just about had it with them.
Image Background
The Whole You image above is intended is to portray the cover circle as the entirety of you, while the background circle represents your beliefs, attitude, skills, etc. In other words, that which lies beneath the central ring is where your hidden world exists. Of course, in this image, you can see the hiddenness. We believe it illustrates well the concept we are putting forth. Also, we think you're able to change some of the hidden items.
What Can Change?
We believe that your attitude, your thinking, your beliefs, your actions, and your language can change. However, you have to be open and willing to effect change.
Do Any of These Things Mentioned Make Sense?
I’m talking about what makes you who you are. Do you know? Go back to the argument I made earlier about your choices, your attitude you usually operate under, the beliefs that either allow you to go forward or hold you back, how you do things, and your ordinary language.
Do you see some patterns in any of these? Here are some questions that may be worth your time to consider. What would you gain by being more open? What would happen if you looked at circumstances that drew positive results to you? Do you have the capacity and willingness to change any of your choices? There is more, and we believe you can think of some by yourself.
Your Answers Are your Own
Only you can find the answers to these questions, simply because of who you are now. It should not take a life-threatening situation to have you stop and ponder these questions (i.,e. like I experienced). If you think this is a waste of your time, then you might consider how you compare to the ones who choose to stop learning, discovering, and experimenting with their life; the people who might already be dead, they just don’t know it yet.
BTW, there are a few clues in this article that might have you ask even more questions of yourself. Can you find them?
(Invitation) If you want to explore these ideas more, we invite you to read an eye-opening article which will make you think.
