Let me hear from you. Contribute your experience and thoughts. I can’t promise to answer every email, but as common themes emerge, I’ll publish some responses and try to faithfully relay the range of points-of-view. rbs@AgileAging.net
In your most private moments, what do you think about aging? Does advancing seniority fill you with distaste, or with relief? Apprehension or contentment? Are you grinning or grimacing?
What image of aging first pops into your mind’s eye? More memory-making with the grandkids? More midnight shuffles to the bathroom? A lengthening shelf of unpronounceable pills? A closet-full of business attire dry-cleaned for schlepping to Goodwill?
Have you dreams deferred or nagging irritations? A Danube cruise? Elusive words on the tip of your tongue? Performing with the Community Players? Being nibbled to death by ducks?
Like most of my peers, I’m aware the aging glass is both half-empty and half-full. We have to take the sour with the sweet. But it’s my impression that we tend to over-emphasize seniority’s downsides. If that’s correct, this reflexive pessimism exacts a high price. Not only can it impair our mental and emotional health. It can also neglect and undervalue seniority’s rich offsetting opportunities, passions and pleasures. This blog is dedicated to helping rebalance the scales. I want to make the case for a positive approach to growing old.
CURRENT POST
In a recent email conversation about aging with a life-long friend, I discovered the two of us were talking at cross-purposes. My friend is in his early 70s, preoccupied with successfully winding up his international law practice. I’m in my early 80s, preoccupied with successfully winding up my recuperative therapy following a fall and serious leg injury. We’d been communicating (or miscommunicating) from opposite ends of the aging continuum. This awkward gap got me thinking that aging may be better understood not as a unified flow but a succession of distinct phases. And since I’m entering what I think of as my final phase, I wanted to take a closer look.
What are this period’s distinguishing characteristics? Its core challenges and opportunities? How’s it different from prior phases? In the spirit of Agile Aging, how can I navigate its passage with informed judgment?
It occurred to me that I am surrounded by a final-phase case study in the form of Nancy’s and my retirement community. Virtually all of its residents are 80 or older. What makes this community tick? What are its key problems and solutions?
I’d like to report my study findings in two blog posts. This month I’ll profile the community. Next month I’ll home in on my personal aging experiences, relationships and impressions within this community. How can I make the most of my own final phase?
Russell Sunshine worked for 40 years in 40 countries as an international development lawyer and independent policy advisor to foreign governments. Now retired back in America, he’s writing non-fiction and practicing agile aging on California’s Central Coast. Russell’s memoir, Far & Away: True Tales from an International Life, is available on Amazon. Click Here