On Being ‘Old’

“Oh, you’re not old!”

I’m ringing my purchases through at the local pharmacy. The sweet young thing at the till, probably a teenager, strenuously objects to some casual remark I’d made about being old. She thinks she’s being kind and supportive, of course.

But you know, I’ll be 60 in a few months. I’m certainly not young any more. And that’s okay.

If the first two, even three decades of our lives are ‘young’, why should we resist the idea that the last two or even three are ‘old’? At my age, being female and living where I do, I am statistically likely to leave this lovely planet when I am 86. Yes, that’s over 26 years from now, and I have a lot of living to do between now and then! But…if I was ‘young’ at 26 (which I was!), why should I resist the idea that I’m ‘old’ now?

Because, of course, ‘old’ is associated with physical and mental frailty. ‘Old’ is too often equated with ‘irrelevant’, ‘out of touch’, ‘dependent’. Older women often add ‘invisible’ to that list. The word has a host of negative associations, so of course that kind young woman vehemently denied the slur I’d cast upon myself. As if calling myself old is in the same camp as calling myself ‘stupid’, ‘ugly’, ‘mean’.

“Age is just a number!” we are told. Well, yes it is. So why assume larger numbers are less desirable than smaller?

Here’s a thought, from the book Successful Aging:

Yes, older minds might process information more slowly than younger ones, but they can intuitively synthesize a lifetime of information and make smarter decisions based on decades of learning from their mistakes.

Daniel J. Levitin, Successful aging

When we age well, we think better. The stereotype of the stick-in-the-mud older person who hasn’t entertained a new idea in thirty years probably exists…and they were probably the tedious 30-year-old who valued no one’s ideas but their own! Lack of mental flexibility is not a problem of age, but of character.

At 59, I know I’m probably horning in on someone else’s party, calling myself ‘old’ just yet, but for me, crossing into my sixties will indeed be entering that stage of life — and I’m looking forward to it! More life to live, more things to learn, more people to meet, more relationships to deepen or begin.

Just, more!