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“There is a fountain of youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.” — Sophia Loren
During my nearly seven decades of existence, I’ve had a lot of time to think about aging — aging as a human, aging as a woman, and aging as a writer. This is not a scientific blog post to ponder, with statistics and studies to convince you of anything. Just the musings of a woman who thinks a lot — and maintains that 20/20 hindsight is a fun practice after going around the sun so many times.
While it’s impossible to come to any conclusions (we never know when our number is up), I can certainly share my observations, right or wrong, naive or familiar to many of you. Some are based in rudimentary psychology about the passage of time, and others just overwhelm me with a sense of assuredness that life is indeed short and should never be taken for granted.
If it were possible to take a bird’s eye view of what lies ahead from a child’s standpoint (representing your age with your fingers), growing old sounds like a sci-fi movie you may have covered your eyes to watch or have not yet fathomed. Someone in their 30s is probably your teacher, so while he or she may be younger than your parents, they are still old by your standards. Then there is that huge void, where you never truly know how old your parents or grandparents are, and you really don’t care because you’re too busy growing up. If your grandparents live to enter their 70s, they are downright ancient. You see their skin begin to look somewhat translucent. Perhaps they don’t move as quickly as they used to. You just know something has changed. Past that decade, and the very idea is Rod Serling-esque, featured in episodes you can only catch on reruns, cable TV, or in boxed sets.
Teen years can be spent awkwardly at first. In my case, strict parents kept me from indulging in the delights of sloppy discoveries. Joking with my two brothers (I still call them “the boys”) was everything in those days. It still is, reminding me of the irreverent kids we once were. It was what kept me sane when other girls were cutting loose and frolicking through their young lives. It also made me scrappy and opinionated.
When high school ended and college began, however, it was anyone’s ball game. By age 18, I simply knew I was invincible. Young women my age back in the skinny ‘70s couldn’t imagine their bodies looking anything other than what they did at the moment — firm, smooth thighs and flat stomachs, while even pasty-white skin was browned by every ray the sun had to offer, spring through fall. Because. Tanning. We couldn’t imagine the dangers of it back then, and looking good was everything, whether it was in a pair of hip-hugger jeans, a mini-skirt, or a pair of cut-off shorts with a distinctive tan line. As we gaze down on our sun-damaged skin now, we may ask ourselves if it was worth it. In my mind, however, brown legs were worth more than the price of old lady lamentations. The sun gave me life.
Once your 20s come along, people in their 30s seem elegant and savvy. If we married and formed families by age 30, we began to actually feel aging for the first time. Sleepless nights, parenting angst, wondering if our lives were heading in the right direction, or if we married the right person. While we were still young, partying began to lose its luster. Your 20s and 30s are eye-opening but fraught with questions that can’t be answered for a while.
While still in your 30s, those in their 40s and beyond are a non-entity, apart from that age group containing our bosses, so the reality of entering that decade still seemed eons away. In reality, however, my 40s presented a huge learning curve, making me into the writer that I am, whatever that means. Of all the decades I look back on now, that decade went the fastest.
Enter the 50 zone. Suddenly you’re in an “over” instead of an “under” category. By now, you know whether it’s time to shift your life gears because you feel you still have a few decades left to see if change was indeed good. The words that escape your mouth are not without seasoning. You’ve learned to control emotions and opinions. Peace is suddenly preferable to drama. A massage is heaven. A facial, life-affirming. Striking a “child’s pose” position during yoga reminds you that toddlers knew their poop. And dressing for anything but your age just looks obscene.
I can look at my 60s as a decade I feared, since it was the one my mom never completed. But in all honesty, it’s one that grounded me. Some health scares convinced me that paying attention to medical appointments, diet and exercise is not without its merits. If I get an admiring look from a white-haired guy, at least it’s better than going unnoticed. And my husband still sees the 20-something in me he met long ago but was not able to pursue until later in life. I do have that pleasant fiction to embrace, even if I don’t see what he does when I look in the mirror.
If they say your 70s are the new 50s or 60s, I have a lot to do to prove them right. My goals include standing up straight, never giving up my pumps, losing the pounds that have depressed me for a few decades, and writing words of wisdom that reside within me but may have taken a vacation for a while. I want to be elegantly old. Aging is an honor, but the young don’t understand that yet. Aging offers you the opportunity to share wisdom without repercussions. Make sure what you say is truly wise, however, because you will be pounced upon at every turn (on social media and to your face).
Everyone’s life has touched thousands of others, yet we will never know who or how many: The smile we offered someone who least expected it but it made their day; something we said that caused another person the paradigm shift they needed at that very moment; the words we told our children that suddenly make sense to them but failed to for a long, long time; or the example we set by making an effort to age with grace. These are the things we will be remembered for. Not the wealth we attained, the possessions we have, nor the times we stayed silent when we should have spoken up. Aging is a gift. It’s simply a matter of how you wish to accept it.
