Act your age

 When you want a child to be more mature, you commonly say, “Act your age.” This phrase gets a lot of use even for adults, probably mostly for middle-aged men who lapse into immature behaviour from time to time. But there is a truth behind that little phrase.

For each phase of our lives, there is an expectation of how we will behave. We can refuse to accept those expectations of adult behaviour and insist that, “I refuse to grow up.” This is called the Peter Pan syndrome and most people consider it more a sign of desperate clinging to youth than anything noble.

So, as you move into the era of your life that is called your golden years, you may realize at some point that you have to “act your age”. When that time comes that you realize that they have inherited the role of a grandparent but so maybe it's time to act like one comes at different times for everyone. But there comes that time to begin to become a grandparent for the people who need this of you the most – those sweet grandbabies who need a grandparent just you needed one when you were young.

The key question to ask yourself is, “what does it mean to be Grandparent and how can I grow into that role for my children and grandkids?”

You didn’t do anything to become a Grandparent. You just raised your son or daughter to be a responsible young adult and nature took its course. Before long you got the call that they had a baby. So, to understand how you can best live up to that high calling, probably the best role model is your own Grandparents and what you needed from her when you were small. Taken in that light, the things those little ones need are…

·        To spoil them. This is the fun part of being a Grandparent. You don’t have to spoil them seriously but if there isn’t always something fun to do and maybe candy and gum at your place if you’re good that would be good wouldn’t it?

·        A place to go. “Going to the Grandparent's house” should mean something just this side of going to heaven to your grandkids. And as long as it stays that way, your grandchildren will be able to always come to you even in times of trouble.

·        Unconditional love. It’s the parent’s job to provide the discipline and rules. You are the one with a ready hug, a loving smile and who always has time to give to the Grandkids

·        A ready ear. A Grandparent is the one that your grandkids can always pour their heart out to. Your understanding and your patience mean you will wait for your grandchild to get out what is on her mind is what makes time with you so precious.

What is old?

I have asked this question before are you old, a senior, a Zoomer or a Boomer. I was struck by how we use the word old or elder when we were examining some of our workshop material. The word old, with its connotations of deterioration and obsolescence, doesn’t capture the many different arcs a human life can trace after middle age.

 Boomers are reinventing what it means to be old, as I have long said, Older adults now have the most diverse life experiences of any age group, Some are us are working, some are retired, some are hitting the gym every day, others suffer from chronic disabilities. Some are travelling around the world, some are raising their grandchildren and they represent as many as three different generations. There’s no one term that can conjure up that variety. But we need labels as it makes things easy for us in society.

 So. if 65-year-olds—or 75-year-olds, or 85-year-olds—aren’t “old,” what are they?  One term I have heard to describe us is “older”. The word is gaining popularity not because it is perfect—it presents problems of its own—but because it seems to be the least imperfect of the many descriptors English speakers have at their disposal.

 Senior is one of the most common euphemisms for old people and it implies that people who receive the label are different, and somehow lesser, than those who don’t.

 What about “elders” which is a term of respect in our Aboriginal communities, but in broader society elder is often associated with frailty and limitation, and older people, at least the ones I know, generally don’t identify with it.

 Zoomer is a word that a Canadian entrepreneur uses to describe our age group and he has a TV show, a radio station and print magazines with that title. It does him well, but I am not sure how many of us identity as Zoomers.

There are other Euphemisms, too: References to one’s “golden years” and to old people as “sages” or “super adults” strain to gloss over the realities of old age. “Phrases such as ‘70 is the new 50’ reflect a ‘positive ageing’ discourse, which suggests that the preferred way of being old is to not be old at all, but rather to maintain some image of middle-age functionality and appearance

A term that is gaining popularity according to Kory Stamper, a lexicographer and an author is an older person. That’s according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English, a database of more than 600 million words collected from newspapers, novels, speeches, and other sources. The database also indicates that elderly, mature, and ageing have been falling in popularity over the past 30 years.

Replacements for all these existing terms—older as well as the words it’s gradually displacing—have been proposed over the years. For at least a couple of decades, gerontological researchers have been making a distinction between the young-old (typically those in their 60s and 70s) and the old old (definitions vary, but 85 and up is common). Another academic term is third age, which refers to the period after retirement but before the fourth age of infirmity and decline (which some would argue unjustly legitimizes distinctions based on physical abilities). But none of these has caught on outside the realms of academic research and op-eds.

Ideally, a definition of old age would capture a sense of things ending, or at least getting closer to ending. All those people who call 65 “middle-aged” isn’t delusional—they probably just don’t want to be denied their right to have ambitions and plans for the stretch of their life that’s still ahead of them, even if that stretch is a lot shorter than the one behind them.

Some thoughts on Fear

In retirement, it is important that you examine and rekindle your old passions, or create new passions. One thing will hold you back from doing this is fear. Ask yourself what you are afraid of? After you know what you are afraid of, then you need to ask what are the results of this fear? Finally, you need to ask if you can live with the results of the fear. If you can, then you should continue. If you cannot, then you need to re-evaluate. Remember: Fear neither causes the events that you fear to happen nor can it prevent them from happening

SOME COMMON FEARS 

1. Women fear of loss of femininity
2. Men fear of loss of masculinity. 
3. We fear what other people will think of us or what we are doing. 
4. The only constant in life is change and many of us fear change. 
5. Some fear they lack confidence.
6. Failure. 
7. What if I try something and it doesn't work out is a big fear for some.
8. If I make a mistake, I will have to live with it the rest of my life, is a fear that holds some of us back. Yes, some mistakes are permanent, but most are not permanent.
9. \Many of us fear the unknown.
10. If I do x I fear that xxxx might happen
11. I may feat the loss of someone specials respect.

Self-image is a conceptual, visual, display of self-esteem. Take stock of those images with which you display yourself: clothes, autos, home, garage, closet, dresser drawers, desks, photos, gardens, and cars. Make it a priority to get rid of the clutter and sharpen the expressions of your life. 

A good way to start to address your fears is to review your life and write a two-page resume of your professional and personal assets. Write it as if it would be read at your funeral as your eulogy. Read this twice a day. for a week. Now rewrite the article in the future tense. List your maximum current potential and future potential. Another good idea is to listen to inspirational tapes. Listening sparks the imagination.

Use self-instruction cards to help you visualize and take charge of your fears and your life. In 21 days by using self-instruction cards and visualization, you can take steps to start changing your life. Here is how it works. Write down your goals on index cards. Make them simple, one goal per card. Write them in the first person present tense. Read these cards twice a day for 21 days. Practice visualizing as you completing the goal as you read the card. 

A Sample Self instruction:
I am going to reach out and reconnect with my friends from high school and my college/university over the next year.

I guarantee that one of two events will happen. 

1. You will move closer to your goals within 21 days or 
2. You will stop reading the card. 

By following the above steps you will make the movie of your mind come alive for you. You will be that much closer to reaching your goals.

Hitting 70

As I move into my seventh year and look forward to my seventieth birthday, I share with you some of what one of my favourite authors Mark Twain thought of this time of life.

It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach-unrebuked.   

You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right.

I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life, which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old age. When we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people we always find that the habits, which have preserved them, would have decayed us. I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we cannot reach old age by another man’s road.

…We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty, I have been regular about going to bed and getting up-and that is one of the main things.

As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink, I like to help; otherwise, I remain dry, by habit and preference. This dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are different. You let it alone.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. 

Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired. But let another person try my way, and see where he will come out.

I desire now to repeat and emphasize that maxim: We cannot reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you.

I have lived a severely moral life. But it would be a mistake for other people to try that, or for me to recommend it. Very few would succeed: you have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals; and you can’t get them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing, and put them in your box. 

Morals are an acquirement-like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis-no man is born with them. I wasn’t myself, I started poor. I hadn’t a single moral. 

There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that-the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the-I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn’t fit, anyway

Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian-I mean, you take the sterilized Christian, for there is only one.

Threescore years and ten!

It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling’s military phrase: You have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, not any bugle-call but “lights out.” You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer-and without prejudice-for they are not legally collectable.

The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will never need it again.

Older Ladies

This one's for the ladies. It's about celebrating and embracing your bodies just the way they are. This catchy song is going to spread like wildfire. Just received this clip on Facebook, it is great and I hope you watch it:

The clip is called Older Ladies by Donnalou Stevens 

Enjoy!

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Older and Wiser?....Probably not

Ever wonder where the idea of the wisdom of the elders came from? When life was simple – and I mean really simple – the elders of the tribe were thought to ho;d all the wisdom. Not so in our modern society where you not only have to decide  where to park when you go downtown or where to get a decent hamburger or where to shop for car insurance.

I saw a cartoon recently in which an older man is asking his granddaughter, who is working on her computer, what she is doing. She replies that she is backing up. The man says, “Now you listen to me and I’ll give you a piece of advice that my father gave me and it has always worked for me. ‘Never back up. You always want to be moving forward. When you back up you might run over something you can’t see in your rear-view mirror.’”

How many of us older and wiser people think we have all the answers when we are really still following advice and rules that we learned as children – back when they may have made some sense? Did your mother ever tell you not to run with scissors, not to play with matches or not to talk to strangers? Did she ever tell you to wait for an hour after eating before going in the water? Did she tell you not to play with that stick because you might poke some kid’s eye out? Did you father ever tell you to get a secure job, stay with that same company and then collect a nice retirement check after say, 35 years? Probably. Guess what? I played with a sticks and I went swimming after only 45 minutes. 

I have friends who talk about the good old days and I wish they would stop. Truth is, it was a struggle and many of us kept wishing things would be easier. We just refuse to remember that it was not as easy as we’d like to remember. 

I can hardly remember about  how much we complained about things back then. Do you remember wishing you had a color TV instead of that old black and white one – the one with the rabbit ears? The one you had to jump up from the couch to change the channel? Do you remember wishing your car had air conditioning? Do you remember when we had to defrost our refrigerators? Or what a struggle it was to get the ice cubes out of the tray? I could go on. Life was cruel and hard back then. Those were the BM days. (before microwaves)

I also wish you would stop telling me over and over and over again about your successes from 45 years ago. So what if you were the manager of the mimeograph department back then? Does anyone today even remember what a mimeograph machine is (or was)? Those talents and experiences are so long obsolete that no one even knows any more what they were or why they were important. And stop telling me about your 37 years’ experience as a teacher or whatever it was that you did. I strongly suspect that you didn't really have 37 years experience. Rather, I think you had one year’s experience, 37 times. (There is a difference you know.)

I also wish you would stop telling me over and over and over again about your successes from 45 years ago. So what if you were the manager of the mimeograph department back then? Does anyone today even remember what a mimeograph machine is (or was)? Do you know what those talents and experiences are so long obsolete that no one even knows any more what they were or why they were important. And stop telling me about your 37 years’ experience as a teacher or whatever it was that you did. I strongly suspect that you didn't really have 37 years experience. Rather, I think you had one year’s experience, 37 times. (There is a difference you know.) See how it feels when I keep telling you again and again?

Those of us who are “older and wiser” need to start facing the truth. We need to start learning new skills, new techniques and accepting new ideas. I’ll admit it – I remember hearing myself say – way, way back in 1989. “What the hell do I need a computer for?” Now I know what I need a computer for. I just wrote this piece on one. And maybe I still need to learn. The other day I heard myself say, “What do I need one of those fancy phones for? ” Deja vu all over again.

So please get off your old, obsolete soap box and stop telling me that because you are older, you are wiser.

Thanks to Paul  for the ideas 

About growing older

Thanks to Patti for this

ABOUT GROWING OLDER...

First ~ Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.

Second ~ The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.

Third ~ Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know "why" I look this way. I've traveled a long way and some of the roads weren't paved.

Fourth ~ When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.

Fifth ~ You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.

Sixth ~ I don't know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.

Seventh ~ One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change from being young.

Eighth ~ One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.

Ninth ~ Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.

Tenth ~ Long ago when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today it's called golf.

And finally ~ If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you are old.