Growing Older
I seem to be on a roll with this aging theme.
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I was having one of those days when everything feels off. I couldn’t connect with the people around me. My long list of annoying tasks wasn’t getting any shorter, and I wasn’t being efficient with my time. The cats were complaining too much. Even my computer was acting up.
None of that helped my mood, and the situation continued for a few days.
When I was younger, a day or stretch of days like this would have bothered me much more. Now, I shrug it off more easily, knowing it’s temporary. I have a solid sense it will pass and better days are ahead.
You can tell a young person this, and they might even believe you. But if they do, they still won’t know it in their bones, the way you can know something only through lived experience.
That’s one of the many things I appreciate about getting older.
A few of my favorite aging things
I honestly can’t remember now what I expected — or feared — when I turned 60. Although 60 was a big number, I wasn’t as apprehensive about it as I’d been about turning 50. But, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t expecting the expansion I’ve experienced so far in my first few years of this decade.
No one tells you about this. At least, no one did in the past, though now more women are speaking up about the benefits of the later decades of life. (Men may be doing this, too, but I’m seeing it mainly from women; maybe women need age-positivity more because of the more negative way society views us as we age.)
For the most part, though, we’re sold the usual capitalist bill of goods. Why capitalist? Not just because a Flower Child like myself isn’t a fan, but because capitalism relies on selling us as much as possible — and what better way to sell us stuff than to keep us dissatisfied with our condition? There’s a lot of stuff to be sold; the global anti-aging market was estimated at $47 billion in 2023 and is expected to increase to nearly $80 billion by the early 2030s.
But what if we don’t need all that anti-aging stuff? What if aging isn’t something to be fought?
Okay, you may be thinking, you keep telling us aging is great, but what exactly is so great about it? You’ve only alluded to the benefits in passing here and there.
Well, let me spell them out for you. And before you get your knickers in a twist, I fully acknowledge we’re more likely to enjoy these benefits if we’re doing at least somewhat okay financially and physically. So here they are.
I started this post with the lesson of impermanence — one of the fundamental truths that Buddhism teaches, but one that can be fully absorbed only by accumulating lots of empirical evidence. By living it.
But that’s not all, folks.
As we age, most of us also feel more free to be who we are, rather than trying to fit a mold of who we think we should be or who we’re told we should be. We probably know ourselves better than we did before; we may have gone through numerous futile attempts to change; we’re likely to be more accepting of ourselves the way we are. I’m always trying to improve, and growing older doesn’t change that, but I’m also more realistic about my limitations and my basic nature. I’ve noticed that in old novels — say around Jane Austen’s time, before the era of self-help — while characters grow and develop, there’s also more acceptance that people simply are the way they are. Now, I’m more aligned with those old novels.
If anything, I’ve noticed, we tend to become more ourselves as we age. But if we’re lucky and have worked at it, we’ve learned from our many experiences and have become better versions of ourselves. And most of us have learned to take ourselves a lot less seriously than when we were younger.
We also care less what others think of us. I don’t believe anyone who says they don’t care at all what people think of them; sorry, we’re social creatures who evolved to care about that deeply, because the biggest threat to our survival was being cast out of our group. But by the time we hit our 60s, most of us care about it a lot less than we used to. I’ll take that.
By this age, many of us are lucky enough to have the freedom to live how we want to — or at least, to move in that direction. The hustle to achieve loosens its grip on us, especially when it comes to achieving the way we’re expected to. We may hear — and even heed — a renewed call to follow our passions. Our greater awareness of our limited remaining time can be a drag, but it can also spur us to make the most of the time we have left.
To round it all out, by the final third of life we’ve presumably become more wise — duh.
No, it’s not all rainbows and kittens
Okay, I likely sound far wiser than I actually am. I’m not nearly as far along in my personal development as I’d like to be at the ripe old age of 63. I haven’t accomplished nearly as much as I’d like to.
And let’s face it — the situation I described at the beginning of this post was minor: a few annoying days. It’s one thing to deal with that and another to face anything really serious. Plus, like most of us, I feel weighed down by the state of the world; the climate crisis and the collapse of democracy aren’t going away anytime soon, so I can’t tell myself they’ll be better in a few days.
Nor am I starry-eyed about aging, having seen the serious physical and mental challenges my elderly parents and friends’ parents have gone through. I worry about the future — mine and the world’s. Even if the climate crisis plus an economic collapse don’t plunge us into some kind of Mad Max scenario before I get really old, what will my older age be like? Will Rafael and I be saddled by illness like my parents, or will we be traveling into space at age 90 like William Shatner?
All around us I see friends our age and older succumbing to arthritis, illness, and all manner of injuries. I’m 30 pounds heavier than I was for most of my adult life, and I don’t like that, despite all the calls for fat-positivity. It takes me longer now to recover from a bad night’s sleep. And I’m only at the threshold of old age, not all the way in.
Growing older versus getting older
Still, I’m doing okay for now. And though I’m not as developed as I’d like to be, I’m much farther along than I’ve ever been before — in ways that make a real difference to me, including how I feel about my life. I hope the ways in which I’ve improved also make a difference to those around me.
And if I make it to 80 or 90, I hope I’ll look back at this time and think how undeveloped I was: that will mean that I’ve progressed even farther. I don’t plan to stop growing.
Getting older is something that happens to us. Growing older can be something we approach intentionally, appreciating the gifts of freedom and expansion that this last third of life can bring. That’s not something to fight.
Have you noticed a shift in how people approach and talk about aging? What’s your experience of aging?
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I recently treated myself to a facial. The menu of options included a "pro-aging facial." Pro, not anti!!
This one little thing made me so happy!
Seeing how badly his 90s have been for my father, it's been a stark reminder of how the body can break down dramatically at a certain age, even if you've always been active and health-conscious. Most people (especially men) don't even live until their 90s though, so there's that.