September 23, 2023
"Try a week of 'age belief journaling,' in which you write down every portrayal of an older person — whether in a movie, on social media or in a conversation."
"Then question if that portrayal was negative or positive, and whether the person could have been presented differently. Simply identifying the sources of your conceptions about aging can help you gain some distance from negative ideas.... [T]ry to look at the honest reality with optimism. If you’re feeling deflated that your tennis game isn’t as strong in your 70s as it once was... remind yourself: 'No, I can’t play tennis like I did when I was 50, and I can only play for 10 minutes. But I can still play.'"
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Try a week of turning your television off and take a week off of Facebook and Twitter.
You will instantly feel better about your life and everything else around you.
Now all you have to do is never turn that crap back on again.
Cause and effect reversed. Healthier people are more positive than unhealthy people.
NYT with another Fox Butterfield-inspired, wet-streets-cause-rain, backwards take on cause and effect. In reality, those who live healthier, therefore longer, lives are the ones able to think positively about getting older. Those who've gotten old(er) and are unhealthy aren't going to change a damn thing by chanting affirmations every morning.
This is a subset of the Great American Anorexic Mindset. Change your diet, change your attitude and you will live a longer, better life. Exercise, stop alcohol, add coffee (or whatever the latest trend says) and you will be a more vibrant you!
Aging sucks. Cowboy up and stop trying to control the inevitable as if you have power to change it. A glass of whiskey is a pleasure. So is a slice of black forest cheesecake now and then. Take a walk because the sky is beautiful. Appreciate life's gifts.
If you look to entertainment for a self-image of what older people should be like, be ready for utter despair considering that in the movies before the 1960s or so, people in their 40s looked like they were in their 60s by today's standards.
People with a purpose are more active, healthy and optimistic. Neurotic, lazy, or pessimistic people aren't as healthy. Getting off social media and avoiding the news would be a good place for people to start.
The 47 year-old Dr. Koepp who considers that her bum hip may be because she is aging is in for a surprise when she hits 60, 70 or 80.
Keeping fit is hard work.
Lift weights.
Bend and stretch into uncomfortable positions.
Walk or pedal a bicycle fast enough to raise a serious sweat for at least half an hour.
Your body and your fitness are diminishing every day.
Work hard or spend your declining years waiting for someone to change your diaper.
Journal about my age? WTF for? The only time I actually think about my age is when I have to write it down.
I've written before, I had arthritis in my knees forever. I thought early on that I'd rather wear 'em out and have memories other people don't than sit back comfy and think about all the pablum I did instead.
It takes maybe half an hour after I get up before they don't ache. I don't care, I'm used to it. Wouldn't swap. Add all the crap I did to myself in MA over the decades and the things that actual aging does to me pales. I still practice although competition is out.
One of the things I respect most about Althouse is that she gets up and dog trots that path every day.
(if dup, sorry. Blogger's hiccuping today)
This has absolutely nothing to do with convincing people that what they may see as an addled old man isn't what they see.
Fuck it. I'm dragging this out as long as I can.
Speaking of cause/effect in aging, I've asked a couple of doctors if my continuing to run 5 miles (slowly) at age 69 is wearing out my knees and legs, or strengthening them? They could not give me a straight answer.
From "How to Change Your Mind-Set About Aging/People who think positively about getting older often live longer, healthier lives. Here is how to reconsider your perspective"
Based on how much of the stuff they publish is rubbish, one "How-To" would be to stop paying attention to the Times. And it doesn't even cost you anything to do it.
I’d be journaling more if I didn’t have to carry around those stone tablets I’m still using.
I'm happier than I've ever been. I think it's all part of my cognitive decline. I can think of no rational reason to be cheerful but there it is.
Planned Parent/hood?
This is a fast changing world. I think in olden times, old people had more wisdom to impart, but nowadays you become progressively dumber as you get older. I don't have any useful advice to pass on to the younger generation. I would recommend not getting facial tats, but in a little while they might be a prerequisite for landing in a corner office. My gut instinct tells me that it's a bad idea to cut off your penis, but if you're looking for a career in Human Resources that might be the way to go....I'm just glad I lived through eighty years of mostly peace and mostly progress. There were worse times and worse places to be alive on this planet. I haven't gathered any meaningful wisdom from the experience, but I'm grateful for the first class ride to nada.
Tedious Boomers talking about themselves and expecting the world to be interested. Didn't see THAT one coming.
Should have added that the younger Boomers are the target market for this "age journaling" thing, not necessarily the people in the article.
There’s a wonderful, thought provoking, book on this theme by Richard Rohr, called ‘Falling Upward’. One of his threads is that the first half of life is about building a vessel and the second half is about filling it. It’s very good (and better than my description).
This has absolutely nothing to do with convincing people that what they may see as an addled old man isn't what they see.
Indeed!
WRT portrayals of aging, I'm always irritated by the "Grandma is a swinger, an avid water skier, and is on her third summit of Everest" portrayals. (And it's never Grandpa, because Grandpa is always either a curmudgeon or an idiot, usually out of shape or alternatively a retired spy or Special Forces soldier, and, if at all interested in sex, a dirty old man.) Why can't fictional portrayals of older people ever reflect the reality of what a healthy older person does to maintain fitness and can no longer do?
I'm not 60 yet and have never enjoyed exercise, but I love hiking and being able to get to beautiful places. So I'm trying to use my 50s to develop habits that will redound to my benefit in the coming years. I walk five brisk miles a day and am ever so reluctantly trying to incorporate yoga (not the spiritual part, Crack) or stretching and weights or body weight exercise into my daily routine. Ugh.
"I'm not dead yet" turns out to be a pretty compelling perspective once you have had some intimate liaison with the alternative.
It is, however, not a particularly compelling argument for ones suitability for high political office.
rhhardin said...
Cause and effect reversed. Healthier people are more positive than unhealthy people.
Soooo...I was in an argument with the wife's Hawaiian roommate about this. She just retired full bird as an OT, then she did a little work for her doctorate and is now in some kind of private health setting. In her lecturing colonel voice she rationally explained to be the current thinking aging is entirely dependent on habits and lifestyle and changes in behavior while I took the (correct) side that, like the mountains of data on human intelligence , like form all those twin studies, longevity and healthy aging is pretty much predetermined...I forget the exact numbers and all those books are in storage but something like 70/30 favoring your genes and DNA and your telomeres. IOW you can fuck it up but if you were dealt a bad hand you'll never make it to the fat tail...the good one, anyways...
Like in all aspects of science at the moment, the data is inconsistent with the answers 'science' wants to hear...
Positive thinking can bring benefits. Still, time and illness will take their toll on our bodies, and we'll move from go-go to slow-go to no-go.
Boy, mindfulness sure is a religion at the Times, a religion for the non-religious.
Old people today, my tennis game has declined
Old woman about 130 years ago:
At about that time one of my students, interested in the early history of New York, happened to call upon an old woman living in a shanty midway between these two schools. She was an old inhabitant, and one of the early roadways that the student was hunting had passed near her house. In conversation with the woman he learned that she had had five children, all of whom had been taken from her some years before, within a fortnight, by scarlet fever; and that since then she had been living alone. When he remarked that she must feel lonesome at times, tears came to her eyes, and she replied, "Sometimes." As he was leaving she thanked him for his call and remarked that she seldom had any visitors; she added that, if some one would drop in now and then, either to talk or to read to her, she would greatly appreciate it; her eyes had so failed that she could no longer read for herself.
--How to Study and Teaching How to Study (1909) by F. M. McMurry, Professor of Elementary Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
I can enjoy a glass of whiskey or a slice of cheesecake all the more knowing that I'll be running 10 or 12 miles and walking another 10 every day. It is possible (with a bit of luck and lot of work) to stay passably fit in one's advancing years. It DOES require a daily battle of wills between the urge to give in to lethargy and the knowledge that you should not. So far, I am winning for the most part.
My father was always fit, never overweight (family lore was that he was a fat teen-ager but exercised out of it), golfed weekly, quit smoking after the surgeon general's report. He died of a brain tumor at age 66.
I've always had a tendency to being overweight (when I was a kid my parents said I was "husky"). I started smoking when I was 15 (secretly) and quit (many times, but for good:) when I was 40. I've never been athletic. I turned 80 earlier this year. It's nothing to be proud of.
You don't "earn" those extra years of life. Treat them as a duty imposed on you (by God, By Fate, whatever). If God allows you those extra years, use them!
"My father was always fit, never overweight (family lore was that he was a fat teen-ager but exercised out of it), golfed weekly, quit smoking after the surgeon general's report. He died of a brain tumor at age 66.
You don't "earn" those extra years of life."
No kidding. A friend of mine died last year. 65 years old. He was always in good shape, athletic. Out for a run with his son, he had a heart attack.
Sometimes, you get clues. But in the end, you never really know.
Pete said...
"Speaking of cause/effect in aging, I've asked a couple of doctors if my continuing to run 5 miles (slowly) at age 69 is wearing out my knees and legs, or strengthening them?"
You're wearing them out. Mine didn't start out bone on bone where they are now (pretty much). Question is what do you value more? So you're knees hurt at 75, that's my age and I have no interest in marathons.
Wince :=> Funny man.
How about immortal characters, like elves?
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